


interlude: bridges

by sunnydaisy



Series: Forbes-Winchester Family AU [3]
Category: Supernatural, The Vampire Diaries (TV)
Genre: 'birth and death of the day' verse, F/M, PTSD, and depression, and loss, and survivor's guilt, angst on angst on angst, author is sorry, dealing with grief, deals with heavy themes, like trauma, lots of heavy stuff went down and the characters have to deal with it tbh!, really guys it's sad AF, so many feelings, we're working through some stuff
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-09-22
Updated: 2021-01-24
Packaged: 2021-03-07 16:09:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 32,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26590414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sunnydaisy/pseuds/sunnydaisy
Summary: South Dakota is wild, free, and quiet enough to deal with your demons.-a 'birth and death of the day' fic
Relationships: Caroline Forbes/Klaus Mikaelson
Series: Forbes-Winchester Family AU [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1898902
Comments: 93
Kudos: 96





	1. overture

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mind the tags! We're dealing with lots of emotions, not all of them positive, and I tried to be as all encompassing as I could in the warnings. If you think of one I'm missing, please let me know. If you'd like to message me to see if this story is for you, that is perfectly fine!
> 
> This is not the true sequel to 'birth' - that will come later this year.

**overture  
** _an orchestral piece at the beginning of an opera, suite, play, oratorio, or other extended composition_

* * *

It’s been almost two weeks since Caroline has had a good, home cooked meal, she’s pretty sure the sulfates in the various hotel and motel water are not only drying out her hair but also breaking her out; and she’s like, eighty percent sure that the last motel, a glorified truck stop in the middle of nowhere, was the scene of a grisly crime at some point. The one before that had _roaches._ And possibly bedbugs—she hadn’t been super keen on investigating the tiny brown spot that had run across the floor.

But Dean?

Dean is _thriving_ , falling easily into the rhythm of road life more with every diner they stop in. He orders cheeseburgers with milkshakes and fully loaded fries while she stares in disbelief at the sheer amount of food he is able to consume in a single sitting. 

“But how?” she finally asks when they’re just under two days out from Bobby’s. “How are you not, like, sick all the time?” She reaches out and pokes his arm. “How do you still look like that? This,” she waves at his burger, currently sitting in the excess grease it has shed on his plate, “is literal garbage.”

He points at her with a fry. “Blasphemy. This is fine dining. And besides,” he shrugs and pops the fry into his mouth. “Iron stomach.” 

She shakes her head over her chili. 

“Guess you have to get used to it,” she mutters, tearing a piece of her roll and dipping it into the soup. 

“Yeah, which you will not be doing,” he says, tone shifting to just a tad stern. “Your only job is to stay at Bobby’s and do your Independent Study thing. Georgetown awaits, right?”

A pang of guilt slices through her, but she doesn’t correct him. “Georgetown awaits,” she echoes half-heartedly. 

It’s another day and a half up to Bobby’s place, and when they finally, _finally_ pull into the junkyard, she thinks Dean might actually make a run for the Impala once they park. 

“I missed you,” he croons to the car, his palm resting on the roof. 

“You are so weird,” she informs him tartly, hoisting her bag over one shoulder. 

“Shhh. We’re reconnecting.” 

Caroline rolls her eyes heavenward and turns towards Bobby’s house— 

—and freezes, the blood draining from her face. 

“Dean,” she says hoarsely, hardly daring to move, to breathe. 

_Adam_ is standing on Bobby’s porch, his hands in his pockets and fear on his face. 

The tone of her voice must alert Dean to the fact that something is _very_ wrong, because he’s at her elbow in an instant before he looks up and sees for himself. She feels him go very, very still next to her. 

“What,” he begins lowly as Bobby comes out, his hands raised, “the _fuck_ is going on, Bobby?” His voice rises towards the end of the question into a shout; Bobby winces and Adam backs away. 

“Listen,” Bobby begins, “it’s not what you think.”

“Yeah?” Dean snaps, “cause I’m thinking that’s the ghoul that nearly killed Care.”

Bobby steps down off the porch, both hands lifted, palms facing them. “That’s what I thought too,” he says, advancing slowly. “But I tried everything, Dean—and I mean _everything_.” He hesitates before adding, “Even had Castiel check him out.” 

Caroline sneaks a glance over at Dean and winces at the look on his face. It’s a mix of devastation and betrayal, but she blinks and it’s gone, replaced by a scowl. 

“That doesn’t mean shit,” he snaps. “We did that last time and he was still a fucking ghoul.” He edges over towards Caroline, partly blocking her from view. She chews her lip anxiously, eyes fixed not on Bobby, but on Adam, who looks— _devastated._ He looks as though someone has carved his heart out with a spoon and a shock of sympathy streaks through her. 

Bobby sighs. “Had Missouri check too,” he says. “Human as the day is long.” 

She blinks and it’s on the tip of her tongue to whisper to Dean _who is Missouri?_ But Dean’s entire demeanor changes at the confirmation. His shoulders tense, then fall; his fists unclench and he looks so _tired_ that Caroline reaches out and puts her arm around him. 

“Hey,” she says softly, so that only he can hear. “Hey, listen. We made it. We’re here, and we’re safe.” Her fingers tighten slightly on his shoulder. “We can rest for a while.” 

_Rest_. 

The word lands on him. He looks over at her and she offers her best, sunniest smile. 

“Yeah,” he says finally. “Yeah, okay.” 

— 

Bobby’s house is bigger than she expected, though she can’t really articulate _what_ she expected. Logically, if he had offered to house two entire people for an undetermined length of time, his house had to be large enough to accommodate them, but somehow, she had always pictured him in a small cabin out in the middle of nowhere.

Instead, his house is bigger than theirs in Mystic Falls, and, she notes in quiet delight, is painted a robin’s egg blue that makes her wonder for the first time if Bobby has ever been married. She makes a note to ask Dean later. 

The house is a fortress, nestled on a sprawling landscape and surrounded on all sides by nothing but wild. Bobby has no neighbors as far she can see, just hills and trees and mountains in the distance. 

It would be beautiful, and perfect enough to put on a postcard; but the house sits right smack in the middle of his junkyard. Beaten up cars in varying states of decay sit piled high on the outskirts of his front and back yards; she squints at one in particular that she thinks she recognizes as belonging to John Winchester. 

“This is your room,” Bobby says, his baseball cap in his hands. Caroline glances down and sees that he’s twisting it nervously, as though he’s afraid she’ll turn her nose up at the tiny space. 

“This is perfect,” she decrees firmly, hiding her wince at just how small the room actually is. “Seriously, Bobby, it’s great.”

She thinks she sees an honest to god blush on Bobby’s face before he nods once and heads back down the stairs. Behind him, Dean rolls his eyes.

“Laying it on a little thick, don’t ya think?”

Caroline ignores him. “Why is your room bigger than mine?”

He leans into her tiny room and takes a look around before drawing back and smirking down at her. “Wouldn’t take much to achieve that,” he snarks. 

“ _Seriously_. I’ve got more stuff, I should get the bigger room.”

“I’m older, and I’m bigger,” Dean retorts. “Besides, you chose to bring half your closet with us. We’re on the run, not the run _way_. Suck it up, buttercup.”

“I hate you,” she whisper-calls after him as he walks down the hall towards his own, larger room. 

She turns back towards her room—her tiny, thimble sized room. A twin bed is shoved into one corner, next to a tall window that overlooks a few skeletal cars; further in the distance, she sees the beginnings of rolling hills peaking over the tops of the trees. 

A desk—clearly a newer purchase, based on its lack of dust—sits opposite the bed, with just enough room for a chair. There is no dresser, and she’s pretty sure the closet is the size of a postage stamp. 

“It’s pretty small,” Adam comments from the hall; Caroline nearly jumps at the unexpected sound. “Sorry, sorry,” he says, hands up. “Sorry. My bad. I—I thought you heard me, on the stairs.” 

Her heart is thundering in her chest, but she manages a small smile. “No, you’re fine. Just—a little on edge, I guess.”

He gives her a half-smile that’s just this side of self-deprecating. “I guess we haven’t, uh, technically met.” He sticks out his hand. “Adam Milligan.”

She stares at his outstretched hand a beat too long, and he wavers, dropping it back to his side before she can say anything. “I guess you already met me, then,” he says softly, his tone holding just the slightest edge of bitterness. 

“I know that it wasn’t you,” Caroline tells him quietly, “but it—I need time.” She offers him a weak smile. “I, um—it wasn’t great. For me.” 

Adam gives her a tiny nod, just the slightest tilt of his chin downwards. “Could I ask you?” he begins, “what exactly a ghoul is?”

The word _ghoul_ , in his voice, is enough to bring her back; and all at once, she is on the floor of the Fell tomb, her side ablaze with pain, vervain burning through the skin and muscle of her wrists until the bone is exposed. She is immobilized, waiting for death to come, certain that her number has been called and her time is up. 

She gives voice to none of these things, but Adam must read some of it on her face because he drops his gaze to the floor. Caroline shakes her head, pulling herself out of it, but the damage is done. 

“Another time, maybe,” she offers, her voice cracking. “When everything’s not so—fresh.” 

The smile he gives her is one she recognizes well: he doesn’t believe her, but he’ll humor her into thinking he does. “Sure,” he agrees easily, taking a step back. “That sounds okay.”

Caroline watches as he retreats down the hall, towards what she assumes is his room. She watches as his door, across from Dean’s, shuts, before slowly shutting her own. 

—

As it turns out, Mystic Falls High Independent Study is a _joke_. Caroline thinks grimly that she really should have seen that one coming.

The entire course load consists of worksheets with due dates that she discovers are less like due dates and more like gentle suggestions. None of her teachers press her for them, but she still faithfully turns each set in on time like the valedictorian she hopes to be would.

But the tiny printer that Bobby had set up on the floor next to her just as tiny desk can barely print off all the worksheets she has, and it runs out of ink halfway through her second week. 

“This is bullshit,” she complains, dropping the stack of papers next to Dean belligerently. The ink is already gray on the first page, and by the end of the stack, it is so faded that her printed worksheets look entirely blank. “ _Bullshit._ ”

Dean shrugs. “Take it up with Saltzman,” he suggests, stirring his coffee and staring hard at the newspaper in front of him. 

“I _can’t_. No one’s allowed to know where we are, remember? Ric will definitely ask—” 

“So just don’t tell him.”

She scowls at him. “Because things are always that simple,” she says sarcastically. “They’re my friends, Dean. They’re probably worried AF, and—” 

“Found another one,” Bobby cuts in as he walks in from the library, a book with yellowing pages in his hands. He hands Dean a newspaper article and like that, she has lost his attention. “Nineteen fifteen,” Bobby says, and Caroline blinks, battling twin urges to stomp her foot like a child or burst into tears. 

In the end, she does neither— she simply picks up her stack of barely legible worksheets and backs out of the kitchen, fighting back the suddenly overwhelming urge to cry. 

Adam is standing at the bottom of the stairs, an empty cereal bowl in one hand and a guilty expression on his face. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop,” he begins, “but if you need ink, I can—I’ll go with you to get some.” 

Caroline isn’t entirely comfortable with him, but—well, she _needs_ her printer ink if this Independent Study thing is going to work. And she _wants_ it to work, wants to insist upon normalcy where she can still find it; but more than that, she needs it to work if graduation and college are still going to be a viable goal in seven months. 

It has to _work_ , so she shelves her discomfort and says, “Yes, please.”

—

“Can I ask you something?” Caroline asks as he navigates the beater truck Bobby had loaned them through the streets. 

Instead of answering, Adam half-shrugs, and it’s a gesture so reminiscent of John Winchester that she has to briefly look away, old grief aching anew. 

There’s no delicate way to ask what needs to be asked, so she dives in before she can overthink it. “How—how are you here?” It treads dangerously close to Klaus’s _you were dead_ and she has to push aside the guilt that pangs through her at the thought of him. 

Adam tilts his head at the road ahead. “I’m not sure,” he says thoughtfully, signaling a lane change. “One minute I was dancing with my—don’t laugh, but I was dancing with my prom date.” Her head swivels towards him, and she can’t help but smile at the bashfulness on his face. “Next thing I knew, my whole body hurt and Bobby had a shotgun in my face.” He seems to consider his next words carefully. “I think I died, and someone brought me back.” 

“And you don’t know why?”

“Wish I did.” He waits a moment, his fingers drumming something without a beat against the steering wheel before he blurts out, “Bobby said something like that happened to you?”

 _Something_ —

She swallows. “Oh. Uh, yeah.” Something inside of her wavers, balancing on the precarious edge of a seesaw. She would trust Bobby with her life, and has before, yet she can’t help but feel the stinging echo of the cold, hard floor of the Fell tomb on her back as though she was just there. He isn’t the Adam that had nearly killed her, but the memory of the thing that took his face is sharp, a bell that is still chiming.

Adam may not know what she went through at his own hands, but he feels the temperature shift in the truck. “It’s cool,” he says quickly, signaling a turn and looking past her to check his blind spot. “You don’t have to tell me.”

They fall silent—a heavy, thick silence that Caroline thinks she might suffocate under, until the weight of it is too much to bear and she blurts out, “It’s not you, I promise—”

He cuts her off, the words bursting from him. “But it is me,” he corrects her bitterly. 

And to her dismay, she can’t think of a compelling argument. 

—

Sioux Falls, to Caroline’s immeasurable delight, is a real city. 

There’s a downtown with shops and restaurants and tourists enjoying the cooling air before the crispness of fall truly sets in; and her heart takes off, speeding up giddily. The smile on her face feels foreign and unfamiliar, and she realizes with a jolt that it’s been weeks since she’s had a real, genuine reason for one. 

The office supply store is cramped, but she finds what she needs quickly and grabs a handful of cartridges. Nearby, the store has displayed their stock of notebooks and she can’t help but gravitate towards them, a sucker for a crisp, blank set of pages.

Adam finds her there, gazing longingly at a set of notebooks with sea-foam green covers. 

“Do you, like, want one of those?” he asks curiously, and it snaps Caroline out of her reverie. 

“Oh, um— no, it’s fine.” She tears her eyes from the notebooks and heads reluctantly over to the cashier, handing over her cartridges and a few of the bills from the stash of cash she had taken out of her bank account four cities ago. 

“I’ll meet you outside,” Adam says when she rejoins him at the front. At her quizzical look, he waves her off. “I need some pens,” he says vaguely; she shrugs and heads out to the sidewalk.

While she’s waiting, she takes her phone out and stares at the blank screen where her text messages should be. 

Caroline had texted her friends a brief, vague _don’t worry, I’m safe, I’ll see you soon_ message, blocked all of their numbers, then reset her phone to factory settings somewhere in Alabama. She had written their numbers hastily on a scrap of paper she had then handed over to Dean, for emergencies only; and the only exception, the only one she had kept from Dean, is Klaus’s. 

There it sits, one of only eight remaining contacts: _Bobby. Dad. Dean. Ellen. Jo._

_Klaus._

Her fingertip hovers over his name, and she wonders what he would do if she called him—which ring he’d pick up on, what his greeting would be, what his voice would sound like from thousands of miles away. If he would come find her and bring her back. 

She wonders if he misses her. 

Her hand halts millimeters from the screen, hovering, unwilling to close the tiny gap between screen and skin.

Right beneath Klaus’s name—

_Mom._

Before she can overthink it, before she can remember why this is a very bad, _terrible_ idea, she taps the screen and listens as the sound of the ring trills in her ear. It rings, and it rings, and she lets her eyes close, lets her brain deceive itself into thinking that _someone will answer_ —

 _You’ve reached Sheriff Liz Forbes_ —

Caroline hangs up, her breath catching in her chest and her hand tightening around her phone as she fights back the overwhelming urge to cry. 

“You okay?”

The sound of Adam’s voice snaps her out of it and she locks her phone quickly, shoving it back into the back pocket of her jeans. “Yeah,” she assures him, brushing her hair out of her face and wiping at her eyes as discreetly as she can. “Yeah, I’m fine.” Her eyes drop to the bag in his hand. “Buy something?”

He hesitates before shrugging and pulling out—

—the set of the notebooks she had been coveting—

“It looked like you wanted one,” he says, and he sounds almost…apologetic. “And I figured, you know, whatever I, uh, did to you when—er, I mean, what the ghoul did to you—” he’s fumbling, and she’s pretty sure he’s lost his nerve.

Caroline reaches over and takes the notebooks from him. “Thank you,” she says. “But you didn’t have to.”

Adam doesn’t look at her. “I did,” he corrects quietly, and as he walks away from her, she’s left on the sidewalk, stunned into silence.

On the drive home, he says casually, “I think I’m gonna—I’m gonna head out.”

Her head swivels towards him so fast that she almost gets dizzy. “What? You’re going to leave?”

He shrugs, eyes fixed on the road. In profile, with his stare hard, he reminds her of Dean, back when Dean was softer and before the world had crumbled beneath their feet. “Yeah,” he mumbles. “Been thinking about it.”

And he isn’t Sam, will never be Sam, but his steady, quiet demeanor has been a balm since they arrived in South Dakota, and even though she barely knows him, she knows that she wants him to stay. 

“Where would you go? If you left?”

Adam seems to deflate slightly, his shoulders rounding. “Don’t know yet.” He pauses, his gaze flitting over to her briefly before returning to the road. “My mom was all I had.” 

That decides it. “You have us now,” she says firmly, pushing away her lingering fear. “You should stay. You’re—you’re Dean’s brother, which makes you my brother, and you should stay.” He doesn’t say anything so she repeats it. “You have _us_.”

—

For a while, Caroline is sure the change of scenery has chased away the nightmares. She goes weeks without one—nothing but sweet, dreamless sleep that leaves behind no shadows in the morning. The dark circles under her eyes slowly fade, and even Bobby gives her a gruff compliment about how South Dakota “seems to be agreeing with you, kid.” 

And it _is_. 

Her Independent Study is usually finished by mid-afternoon and it’s then that she finds herself out on a hike, her tennis shoes scuffed and muddy, the soles threatening to peel off of the shoe. Sometimes Adam comes with her, sometimes Jo, who is fighting her own battles, Caroline thinks; and even Dean ventures out a few times, but mostly she is by herself. 

It’s nice, being alone and free from the noise. She’ll never tell another soul, but the feeling of expectations has been almost crushing: Dean’s. Her own. Klaus’s. Sometimes she thinks she can’t breathe under their weight. 

But out here, with just the trees and the grass and the breeze? She’s well and truly nothing—one measly human, an ant, a microscopic bit of fluff, and it’s _freeing_. 

It lasts just long enough for her to think that maybe she has escaped the worst of it, that this is what _healing_ looks like.

But it isn’t.

They’ve been in South Dakota six weeks when the nightmares come back. Six weeks of peace before she falls asleep and sees Bonnie screaming for Elena; Elena, her humanity turned off; Stefan, desiccated; Matt, drowned; Tyler, gone where she can’t follow.

Caroline gives up on fighting it, resigned to seeing her friends in pain. 

Sometimes she dreams of Klaus too, dreams where she wakes up still feeling his lips on her neck, his hands on her waist, his hips pressing down on her own. It sparks a memory of Stefan mentioning offhandedly that Katherine had often invaded his dreams to torment him, but she doesn’t think this is Klaus reaching across thousands of miles just to make her hot and bothered. 

Those dreams always end in flames too. 

—

Caroline gathers up all of her courage and asks Castiel the question that’s been lingering in the back of her mind for weeks now. 

“Do you think I came back wrong?”

She’s baking cupcakes—Bobby jokes that if she keeps baking so much, he’s going to have to pull old Jane Fonda workout tapes from the attic just to keep up with the demands of hunting. But the methodical measuring and stirring and pouring gives her brain a break and her hands something to do. Castiel is her taste tester, and a bad one at that: he tells her very gravely that each one is outstanding. 

Her question is quiet but it fires off in the space between them like a gunshot. 

Castiel slowly lowers the cupcake in his hand, his gaze serious as he studies her. The silence lingers long enough that she has to resist the impulse to fill it, to wave the question away with a lightness she hasn’t felt in weeks. 

But it’s been eating at her for days, this idea that maybe her nightmares and the feeling that she is slowly sinking into a quicksand that exists only in her mind are not, in fact, fixable. That maybe, just maybe, when she had died and chosen to come back, she came back _wrong._

That maybe her body had been healed but her mind scarred.

“No,” Castiel says finally. “No, I do not think that.”

Her shoulders slip forward. “But Cas, I—I feel _wrong_ , like there’s something wrong inside of me.”

“Perhaps,” he suggests, “you have that—that PSDT you mentioned.” 

“PTSD,” she corrects automatically before tilting her head thoughtfully at him. That hadn’t even been on her radar, but now that Castiel has offered the theory— “Maybe,” she concedes, chewing on her bottom lip. 

He nods slowly. “You said it was quite common in soldiers after a war.”

“Yeah, it is, but Cas, I wasn’t—”

“A soldier,” he repeats stubbornly, “in a war.” He fixes her with that stoic stare and says, “You fought, and killed, and sacrificed, and lost. You _were_.” 

“Cas—” 

“I promised I would not tell Dean,” he says, and she freezes. He has never brought up the deal, has never once mentioned her clandestine trip to the Mikaelson manor, and she had thought maybe they just had an unspoken agreement to never talk about it again. But apparently not. “And I will not renege on my word. But Caroline,” bright blue eyes find hers and pin her in place, “You did not come back wrong. You sacrificed, and you have survived. Allow yourself grace.”

Grace—what a concept. Caroline stares out into space for a moment, her brain whirling. She’s pretty sure she has never given herself grace; no matter how hard anyone has ever been on her, she has always been harder on herself. 

“I like this one the best,” Castiel adds after a beat, pulling her out of her thoughts; and he points to the lemon buttercream on the edge of the counter. “Though they are all very tasty."

She gives him a half-smile. “Baking is my love language,” she says with a flourish of her batter-covered spatula in his direction. “Consider yourself initiated into the Caroline Forbes inner sanctum.”

He blinks at her. “I was previously in the outer sanctum?” 

That makes her laugh, and she feels the slightest bit lighter. “No,” she allows as she slides another batch into the oven. “But now it’s official.”

Caroline catches a glimpse of her reflection in the window over the sink. 

_Grace._

—

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was my honest intention to shelve this verse for a few weeks and work on other things, but I just can't quit it. 
> 
> Feel free to give me a follow on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) and [Tumbler](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)!


	2. aria: halloween

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It gets cold early in South Dakota.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a brief mention of minor assault in this chapter (it is neither descriptive nor very long, but if needed, there is a TLDR in the end notes).

**aria: halloween  
** _a long-accompanied song for a solo voice, typically one in an opera or oratorio_

* * *

It gets cold early in South Dakota. 

Dean is gone on a hunt, and she’s manning Bobby’s phones, lined up as they are on the wall with their handwritten labels—CDC, FBI, CIA, DOJ, FDA—a veritable alphabet soup that, on occasion, rings with skeptical local cops on the other end of the line. 

It’s not exactly professional, but Caroline makes up stories to entertain herself when she gets put on phone duty. She tells one suspicious sheriff from Bloomington, Indiana that her name is Wanda Maximoff, and the CDC Director isn’t in right now, but would he like to have her read him his tarot cards while he waits? She cracks her gum, dons her best Valley Girl impression, and grins widely when he growls and hangs up. 

She tells another local deputy in Sugar Land, Texas that her name is Elle Woods and that she’s moonlighting as the assistant to the special FBI agent in charge to help pay for Harvard Law. That one makes Bobby snort from the other room, and gets her taken off of the phones for a while. 

But she has to do _something_. Independent Study is barely challenging, and she’s already signed up to do audits of classes on Yale’s website using one of Dean’s fraudulent credit cards, rolling her eyes at the name _Ronald Van Zandt_ stamped into the front. After all, there’s only so many times she can write the same paper on _To Kill A Mockingbird._

“Get a job,” Bobby suggests archly on Sunday morning. 

Dean is gone again, back on the road looking for a way into Hell after only a handful of days at Bobby’s, and she’s knee deep into a deep dive on a paranormal subreddit, looking for anyone who has possibly had any kind of interaction with a portal to Hell. It’s hard to find a kernel of truth through the rampant bullshit, but it gives her something to do when she inevitably finishes her schoolwork by ten thirty am. 

Caroline looks up from her computer screen and raises her eyebrows. “Where, exactly?” She gestures aimlessly. “There isn’t exactly an Anthropologie nearby.”

“I dunno what that is,” he informs her tartly as he scoops more eggs out onto her plate. “But I know Ellen could always use more hands on deck.” He shrugs. “Would keep your finger on the pulse of huntin’ too.” 

Which is how she ends up, much to Dean’s displeasure, waitressing at the Roadhouse. 

It’s not the original Roadhouse, she finds out, but a Roadhouse rebuilt. 

“The first one exploded,” Jo says, and it’s something she drops so casually that at first, Caroline doesn’t quite comprehend the words. 

“Sorry—it what?”

“Exploded. Yeah, our friend Ash—I mean, he was more like my brother than a friend—he died.” Jo shakes her head as she shows Caroline the backroom, and now that she’s paying closer attention, she hears the edge in Jo’s voice. “Mom and I couldn’t stand to replace him, but,” she sizes Caroline up critically, “I think he would’ve liked you.” 

_Ash_ —the name triggers a tug in her memory and her brow crinkles. “Did Dean know him, by any chance?”

Jo nods. “Sure. Sam and Dean came around a lot.” Her face turns fond. “Ash, he was a genius. Knew all kinds of things I wish I could’ve learned.”

“I’m really sorry for your loss,” Caroline says softly. _A guy named Ash, or a chick named Pamela_. “Um, weird question. Did a woman named Pamela happen to also work at the old Roadhouse?”

The air thickens just the tiniest bit. “No,” Jo says, “no, Pamela didn’t work at the Roadhouse.” She glances over at Caroline, who gets the impression that the other girl is waging an internal debate before she clearly decides to share what she knows. “Pamela was a psychic, and a friend of Bobby’s.” 

Caroline feels her eyebrows climb up towards her hairline. “A friend, or a _friend_?”

“ _Just_ a friend,” Jo says emphatically, and with that, she is done talking about it. She points to a corner of the room. “You can put your stuff over there. No one but us comes back here.”

And just like that, she’s a waitress. 

—

“Bobby,” she says from her spot behind the bar—Ellen has her on what Jo affectionately calls _bitch duty_ : cleaning used glasses, wiping the spill mat with a fresh rag, _replacing_ the spill rag when it gets too grimy and starts to smell; work that is, without a doubt, too menial for a fully trained bartender but perfect for the one just learning the ropes. “What’re we doing for Halloween?”

The look Bobby shoots her is a fond mix of disbelieving and affectionate. It’s a look she gets a lot from him, often followed, she’s found, by a heavy sigh or a shake of his head. 

She gets both now, a rare double whammy—the sigh _and_ shake. “We ain’t doin’ shit for Halloween, kid,” he says, accepting the beer Jo hands him.

“Oookay,” she says slowly, ignoring the way Jo laughs as she passes by. “Like, _nothing_ nothing? Or like, _watch a scary movie and eat Butterfingers until we’re sick_ nothing?” She moves the spill rag and leans forward on her elbows. “Are we gonna get trick or treaters?”

Bobby stares at her before swiveling in the barstool to appeal to Ellen. “Trick or treaters,” he says beseechingly. 

“Honey,” Ellen says, leaning against the counter next to Caroline. “People ‘round here get enough of the supernatural shit on a daily basis. Nobody celebrates Halloween.” She hands Caroline a new spill rag and a bottle opener before shooing her out from behind the bar. “Now go ask those boys what they’re having.” 

In the back corner of the bar, three men—hunters, Caroline can tell immediately—have gathered around a table, their shoulders hunched and their faces serious. She’s gotten good at telling the regulars apart from the hunters—there’s a lightness, a softness absent from the latter, and now that she’s noticed the difference, she can’t help but watch Dean, waiting for it to vanish from him too. 

She doesn’t like waiting on the hunters, but neither do Jo and Ellen. 

_Bitch duty._

Oh, there are exceptions—Rufus is always a welcome appearance, his weather-worn face an all too rare sight; and of course, Bobby is everyone’s makeshift father. But the rest? 

_Surly and bitter, the lot of them_ , Ellen had said on Caroline’s first day. _And too handsy for their own good_. 

Caroline had figured that out for herself soon enough, along with the fact that she _hates_ hunters. Bobby and Dean, she discovers, are outliers of the field.

A group of them had fought and killed a nest of changelings somewhere in Grand Rapids, returning to the bar to celebrate. It had been minimal at first: little touches on her wrist when she brought them drinks, a hand at her waist as she turned away. She had grinned and borne it all, thinking of tips and the Ivy League; until someone—she remembers every detail of his face, every line and shadow, though his name remained unknown—had cornered her near the ladies’ restroom.

It had been a long time since she had last tasted that particular brand of acrid fear on her tongue. He only backed off when she threatened to put her pen through his thigh. 

She had kept the entire incident to herself. They aren’t exactly flush with allies, and nothing is worth risking Dean. 

With more than a little reluctance, she heads over to the corner bistro table, pad and pen in hand and her brightest Miss Mystic Falls smile tightly in place. 

“Welcome to the Roadhouse,” she chirps, keeping her eyes firmly on the walls behind their shoulders. It’s a trick Jo had taught her—how to remain friendly without seeming interested, maintaining distance without sacrificing tips. “Get you anything?”

They mumble their drink orders and don’t meet her eyes, until the one in the middle says, a hint of suspicion in his tone, “You’re new.” 

“Yep,” she says, looking down at her notepad and pretending to add to the notes there. “Just a couple of weeks.”

He looks at her hard, as though he’s trying to figure out her inner workings. It’s mildly uncomfortable, and his friends shift in their seats, their gazes averted. “You be careful,” he says finally. “Lots of dead things don’t stay that way around here.” 

And she _knows_ what he means, that he is only warning her to watch her back, but she can’t fight off the shiver that snakes its way down her spine. _She_ hadn’t stayed dead, and the way his eyes bore into hers makes a small part of her wonder if he isn’t somehow referring to her. 

“Got it,” she says faintly. “I’ll, uh, get your drinks out.” 

When she returns to behind the bar, Ellen taps her elbow and says lowly, “Wouldn’t antagonize Gordon too much, hon. He’s a loose cannon.” She tips her chin downward and Caroline leans in apprehensively. “Not a big fan of either of your brothers, either.”

Nerves swoop low in her stomach. “What happened?”

Ellen shrugs. “Never could pry it out of them. Dean would only grunt,” she rolls her eyes and Caroline manages a faint, knowing laugh, “and all Sam ever said was that they had a disagreement.” 

Caroline swallows. “That could mean anything, knowing them,” she mutters, reaching for a glass to start filling the drink orders. “Great. _Great_. Another thing to worry about.”

Ellen’s smile is sympathetic and motherly; Caroline wants to lay down and stretch in the maternal air that suddenly envelopes her, as though she is a cat and it, sunshine. “He’ll leave you alone,” she says reassuringly. “You’re just a girl, hon.” She pats Caroline’s hand and walks over to where Jo is balancing a tray full of beers in one steady palm.

And Ellen is right—she is just a girl. 

It’s a comforting sort of anonymity, being no one.

— 

She’s surprised that she’s surprised when it threatens to shatter. 

They’re on a trip downtown—the first night that Dean is home in almost a week. Caroline had cajoled and pleaded that they be a normal family that does normal family things like eat at a steakhouse instead of a three am diner. Dean is unconvinced until she dons her best dejected expression—the one that hardly ever worked on her mom, but always, _always_ did on John. 

It’s there that a woman looks directly at her and says curiously, “Don’t I know you?” She snaps her fingers and points, her eyebrows slashing together as she thinks, her head tilting and her eyes fixed on Caroline’s face. 

Next to her, Dean freezes, Adam shoots her a look of panicked confusion, and Caroline just barely manages to keep a grasp on her composure. “No,” she says as smoothly as she can. “I don’t think so, no.” 

The woman stares for half a beat longer, then shrugs, her expression lightening. “My mistake. Sorry about that, hon!”

Three minutes later, Dean recovers, throwing bills down on the tabletop. “We’re leaving,” he says flatly

Her heart sinks into her shoes. She had curled her hair and put on makeup for this, and it’s the most like herself she’s felt since those first few weeks when everything had seemed so much more hopeful. But the panic that’s slowly unfolding on Dean’s face tears at her, so she swallows her protests and says quietly, “Okay. We’re leaving.”

She dyes her hair the next night, watching mournfully as the blonde she had inherited from her mother vanishes under a layer of brown. Another link, severed; another piece of her, gone. As though it had never existed. 

Dean’s already gone by the time she wakes up the next morning, and he doesn’t come back for two weeks. It’s his longest trip to date, and the day before he does finally return, the terrifying thought that maybe he isn’t coming back pricks at her. 

Later, the disloyalty will flood her with shame and guilt, but the fear never quite goes away.

—

As soon as Dean walks in the back door of the Roadhouse, Caroline nearly tackles him, hugging him as tight as she can until he says mildly, “Chill, Care. It’s only been—”

“It’s been two weeks, Winchester,” she cuts in, “and before that you were only home a few days, and before that—”

He holds up a hand to stop the torrent of words. “Point made,” he says wirily, but she notices that he doesn’t make her any promises. 

What he _does_ do is hover, scowling at the people she waits on until she swats at him in the privacy of the hall that leads to the back. 

The smile, her Miss Mystic Falls smile, her best plastic Barbie doll smile that she had perfected under Damon Salvatore’s tutelage, holds fast to her face until she is well hidden in the storage room, where it finally, _finally_ falls away. 

“It’s creepy,” Dean comments blithely from behind her. “Like you’re a robot or something.”

“Robots get tips, tips help pay for college, _ergo_ robots go to college.” 

He ignores her and mimics her wide smile before rolling his eyes. “You practice this shit in the mirror?”

“Dean,” she says wearily, “I happen to be Miss Mystic Falls.”

He snorts. “Yeah, Sammy mentioned.” He reaches out and tugs on a piece of her ponytail that has escaped down her back. “I gotta head out tonight, Care.”

Caroline whirls around. “But—but you only just got _back_ —” 

“Bobby thinks Missouri may have found something.” 

The words are casual, but he’s staring down at the floor, the tendons in his hands working as he clenches and unclenches his fist. 

“You’re not convinced,” she guesses. 

It’s like he was waiting for the opening; Dean straightens and begins to pace the small room. “Damn right I’m not convinced,” he growls, pointing at her emphatically. “I’m supposed to believe that some coven of witches in the middle of bumfuck Indiana holds the key to walking into Hell?” He snorts. “Yeah, _okay_.” 

Caroline chews her lip anxiously. “Call Bonnie,” she suggests; he scoffs and she glares at him. “Seriously. Bonnie can at least, like, tell you if they’re a legit coven or not.” 

He waves her off. “Missouri already checked them out.” 

And she knows now that Missouri is a psychic, and a damn good one, but it still rankles just a little that he waves off her suggestions so easily. Still, she powers forward hopefully. “Can I come with you?” 

She watches as Dean shifts his weight from foot to foot, becoming overly interested in the floor, and her heart sinks. She doesn’t know how this space between them stretched out so far, or how it even came into existence, but there they sit, on opposite ends of an ever-widening chasm. 

“Care,” he begins, and she waves him off. 

“Never mind,” she says, injecting as much breeze into her tone as she can muster. “Hey, can you help me carry this?” She hoists a box of glass bottles up to one of her hips and watches with only the tiniest bit of dismay as relief washes over Dean’s face. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he says, taking the box from her, “I got you, Care.”

The thought springs up from the shadowy, whispering place that exists in the back of her mind; so quickly that she doesn't have time to rebuke it. Instead, she feels the inky brush of shame as soon as the words slip through her thoughts. 

_Do you?_

—

As a rule, the hunters that patronize the Roadhouse don’t know just who exactly she is to Dean Winchester, but they know enough to leave her mostly alone when he’s around. It helps that he glares daggers at anyone he doesn’t know well, regardless of her presence; but she starts to get annoyed when his glowering begins to leach out of her tips. 

“You gotta quit,” she hisses at him from the corner of her mouth. He blinks at her, the picture of offended innocence. “My _tips_ , Dean. No one wants to tip at twenty percent if you’re sitting there staring them down.”

His hand covers his heart. “ _I_ am harmless,” he protests, and she opens her mouth to retort; but shuts it as soon as she sees Gordon walk in. She watches as his dark eyes narrow on Dean’s back and feels the hair on the back of her neck stand up. 

Over his beer, Dean’s eyes meet hers, and whatever he sees there has him straightening, his features smoothing into a mask of blankness. Unconsciously, she mimics him, their natural familiarity falling easily away. 

“You know this guy?” Gordon wants to know when he reaches the bar, and the hardness in his eyes reminds her, inexplicably, of the Mystic Falls’ tomb vampires. It’s unsettling. 

Dean is quicker than she is. “Waited on me a couple of times,” he says easily, “but she refuses to take my phone number.” He sends her a wink and Caroline catches on, giving an overdramatic roll of her eyes. 

“I don’t date customers,” she says firmly, handing Gordon his newly refilled glass. 

“Smart move. Especially with this one,” Gordon says with a jerk of his head in Dean’s direction, but he still stares at her as though he can see through her skin and right down to her bones. The look he sends Dean’s way doesn’t help. 

When they’re home later that night, Dean says quietly, “I think you need to change your name. The less association you have with—yeah. I just think you need to change it.” He doesn’t elaborate, but the next day she finds a shiny new South Dakota driver’s license with her picture on it. 

This is how she ends up Caroline Campbell, and she feels another piece of Caroline Forbes slip through her fingers. 

“Sounds like Peter Parker’s tween girlfriend,” she comments, turning the license over in her hand; Dean stares at her blankly across the kitchen table and it distracts her long enough from this, the last vestige of her identity being stripped away. “Seriously? _Spider-Man_?” 

He shrugs, his face blank and she groans out loud. “You’re a cultural wasteland, Winchester.” 

In the before, as she’s come to silently think of their lives before the Apocalypse had come bearing down on them, he would have laughed and moaned good-naturedly while she forced him to watch no less than eight pop culture for dummies videos on YouTube.

But in the before, they had Liz. Before, they had Sam.

Now, she lets it fall away. Another conversation left unspoken. 

— 

Caroline has gotten good at predicting the precise kind of nightmare waiting for her once she shuts her eyes. Stressful days, days spent worrying about Dean and running her ass off from one end of the bar to the other preclude sharp, biting images of her friends in misery, though the contents of the nightmares have hardly changed. She knows the rhythm of them well at this point: Elena, ice cold and unfeeling; Stefan, gray and still; Matt, unblinking and unmoving. 

But nights when she finally falls asleep after hours of restless tossing and turning—those nights are when she dreams of Sam. And it’s sick and perverse because the nightmares are horrifying and most mornings she wakes up with tear stains on her pillowcase, but she’s almost grateful.

At least this way, she gets to see him. 

—

“I’ll do something with you,” Jo offers as they’re closing up the Roadhouse on Halloween night. The moon is high and bright in a purple-black sky, the light from it drowning out the stars. Caroline blinks in surprise at the offer and Jo shrugs. “For Halloween. I’ve never—I mean, Mom never let me—” she flushes, stops, and then begins again. “I’d like to do the scary movie thing. If you're still game.” She roots around in her bag and pulls out a jumbo size bag of Butterfingers. “I got candy?”

Caroline blinks again, then beams at her. With Dean and Bobby off on jobs and Adam decamping to the forest with his tent and a sleeping bag (“You can come with me,” he had offered gamely. “Bobby has another tent and you can have the sleeping bag.” She had declined, declaring that Caroline Forbes did _not_ sleep on the ground, no matter how clear the view of the Southern Taurids meteor shower was), she had resigned herself to a night alone with _Ghost Adventures_ as her spooky, festive companion. 

“Jo,” she crows excitedly, “ _Yes._ ”

Jo, to Caroline’s immense disbelief and utter delight, has never seen any of the _Scream_ movies, nor the seminal classic, _I Know What You Did Last Summer_ ; and she is an excellent scary movie companion. She gamely shrieks at every jump scare and grips Caroline’s hand tightly in her own during all of the tense scenes, even though Caroline is positive she has experienced far scarier things in real life.

It’s during _Scream 2_ that the door flies open and Ellen tumbles in, her face pale and blood spilling down the front of her shirt and jeans. 

She jumps, her brain not quite catching up to the scene in front of her until Jo screams out, “Mom!” 

“Where’s—” Ellen can barely get the words out, “—where is _Bobby_?”

“What happened?” Jo cries out and Caroline feels frozen to the spot, her eyes fixed on Ellen. Her blood feels like it’s turned to sludge, and her muscles won’t _move_ — 

“Caroline!” Jo yells, “Caroline, go get towels, _now_!”

Her feet take off towards the kitchen at the order, and she grabs all the clean towels and dish rags she can find before running back into the living room to thrust them into Jo’s shaking hands. She kneels next to Jo and takes one of the rags for herself to press on a smaller wound before risking a terrified glance up at Ellen—Ellen, who had slipped so easily into that nurturing, motherly role that she had been missing— 

Ellen, who is barely hanging on to what looks to be—Caroline blanches, her stomach threatening to revolt—an internal organ, while Jo is shouting desperately, her hands pressed to the wound, the rags soaked through a horrible, vibrant red that sends an ache of familiarity through her side, and she just—

She makes a decision. 

The vials of Klaus’s blood are stashed inside of a tampon box under the bathroom sink, where she knows for a fact none of the men in the house will look. Caroline takes off sprinting, nearly tripping over the top step in her desperation to get to them. 

Down the stairs, she can hear Jo’s pleading, and her fingers tremble as she clasps one vial in her hand. She takes the steps two at a time on her way down, racing through the hallway and throwing herself onto her knees as she thrusts the vial at Ellen. 

“Drink it,” she orders, her voice shaking. “It will heal you, you’ll be okay, just _drink_ it—” 

Ellen’s white face turns horrified. “ _What_ —where did you get—”

“Mom,” Jo begs, “Mom, please—”

The look Ellen weakly sends her says _this is very much not over_ , but she drinks it, draining the vial and grimacing. Three pairs of terrified eyes drop down to the wound, all of them hardly daring to breathe as it slowly, slowly, begins to stitch itself up. 

Caroline rocks back on her heels, her hands pressed to her mouth. 

Slowly, as the terror in the air dissipates, Ellen and Jo turn towards her, identical expressions of confusion and, in Ellen’s case, disgust, on their faces.

“How,” Ellen begins slowly, “the hell do you have _that_?”

The lie spills out. “I—my friend Stefan sent it with us in case I needed it—you should be really careful the next few days, if you die with that in your—”

“I know how vampires are made,” Ellen interrupts flatly, and the disappointment on her face is so reminiscent of Liz Forbes that it nearly hits like a physical blow. “Does your brother know you have this?”

She shakes her head and Ellen nods once. “I didn’t think so. Was this the only one?”

Caroline hovers, caught between the desire to lie while wrestling with the knowledge that if she does and has to use another vial anytime in the future, Ellen will know that she can’t be trusted. She can’t— _can’t_ let her bargain with Klaus come to light. Not yet. 

“No,” she says finally. “I...I have more.”

Disappointment flares across Ellen’s face and Caroline rushes to add, “They’re in case of emergency _only_ , I swear. Please don’t— please don’t tell Dean I have them.” Her brain whirls as she imagines dominoes falling: with her secret stash of vampire blood exposed, there is one less layer of secrecy over her deal with Klaus and she is _supposed to have more time_. She bargained herself for more time, and she will grasp onto that promise with all of her might. 

It’s Jo who answers. “She won’t. We won’t.” At Ellen’s sharp look, she shakes her head and whispers furiously, “You would have _died_ , Mom.” She turns to Caroline, her face fierce and eyes burning. “We’ll keep our mouths shut.” Ellen opens her mouth and Jo cuts her off. “It’s not our business, anyway.” 

Ellen’s mouth is a grim line and she is radiating displeasure but at the ferociously pleading look on Jo’s face and what Caroline can only assume is desperation on her own, she slowly nods. “Fine, then.” 

They leave shortly after, Jo clutching her mother’s hand tightly while Ellen grumbles that she is perfectly fine to walk by herself. She’s pretty sure that it’s not _Ellen’s_ strength giving out that Jo is worried about.

Minutes later, alone once again, Caroline turns the tv off and goes to work cleaning up any trace of blood. It’s well after midnight when she finishes, the entire house reeking of bleach as she hauls the trash outside. Her breath curls into white vapor in the cold air. 

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees a shooting star streak across the dark sky. 

It’s only when she’s back inside the warmth of the house that she realizes that she forgot to make a wish. 

—

Early the next morning, she gathers her courage and goes to check on Ellen, who narrows her eyes at Caroline from behind the bar. The Roadhouse is empty, save for Jo, who is watching them carefully as she wipes down the same spot on a table over and over. 

“How are you feeling?” she asks softly, hovering over by the edge of the bar. Ellen still radiates maternal disappointment, and if she gets any closer, she’s afraid she might crumble under the force of it. 

Ellen arches an eyebrow. “Just fine, thanks,” she says pointedly. “Doin’ my best to not die.” 

Her face warms, and she drops her gaze to the floor. “I’m s—”

“Don’t,” Jo cuts in, appearing at her elbow; Caroline glances up and sees that she is glaring fiercely at her mother. “Don’t apologize for saving her life just because she’s being _stubborn_ about your methods.”

“Vampire blood isn’t a _method_ , Joanna Beth—”

“Okay, but you would have died,” Jo snaps, “and you didn’t.” Her strong fingers wrap around Caroline’s wrist and before she can protest, Jo drags her out of the Roadhouse. 

“Um,” Caroline says, blinking against the sudden glare of late fall sunshine, “thanks?”

The look on Jo’s face isn’t exactly what she would call friendly, but as she paces, her expression softens. “You’re lying about something,” she declares finally, “but I don't care what it is.” She comes to a stop directly front of Caroline and looks directly into her eyes. “You could have kept your secret and let Mom die, but you didn’t. So thanks.”

Caroline’s eyes widen. “That—no, that was never an option, Jo, I wouldn’t—” 

Jo cuts her off with a hard shrug. “Still. All the same.”

She’s walking away, back to the bar, when Caroline finds her voice; it wavers as she calls out, “Will you do me a favor?”

Jo stops and turns, one eyebrow arching in question. 

“Will you train me?” 

The silence stretches out, long and heavy, until Jo tilts her head, a calculating expression on her face. 

Caroline rushes to fill the quiet. “Dean used to, but he won’t—I mean, he doesn’t really have time now, and I—if I’m going to be useful, I need to be able to, you know,” she shrugs awkwardly. “I don’t want to need protecting.”

For a moment, Jo just looks at her, her eyebrows knitted together, as though Caroline is a very complicated puzzle without a box. 

“Yeah, okay,” she says finally, and Caroline feels a soft _whoosh_ of breath leave her lungs as she exhales, her shoulders releasing a tension she hadn’t even realized had nestled its way between the blades. “Here, tomorrow morning, 6 am.” Jo fixes her with a stern look. “Don’t be late.”

With that, Jo turns on her heel and walks back into the Roadhouse, leaving Caroline to stare after her in slightly shocked silence.

She arrives at 5:50 am the next morning, the ice cold air clarifying as she bounces on her toes.

Her brother loves her. She knows that, and returns it in equal measure. But he can’t, and won’t, always be there, she thinks grimly as she stops bouncing to stretch. And the world will not save her.

She will save herself.

—

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warning: it's implied that a hunter corners Caroline and gets grabby; he only backs off because she threatens to stab him with her pen.
> 
> Feel free to follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) and on [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)!
> 
> Lastly, if you are American and over 18, please make sure you are registered to vote! To check your registration, [click here!](https://votesaveamerica.com/)


	3. recitative: thanksgiving (part i)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Caroline was never a winter type of girl.

**recitative: thanksgiving  
** _musical declamation of the kind usual in the narrative and dialogue parts of opera and oratorio, sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech with many words on the same note._

* * *

**part one**

Caroline was never a winter type of girl—given the choice, she’d take the enveloping warmth and lingering sunlight of summer over winter every time. 

It gets dark early in South Dakota in the winter and the sun doesn’t peak through the horizon until well after her alarm has gone off and she’s stumbled blearily out of the shower and into her ankle length fleece robe. The central heat in Bobby’s house works fine, but she’s from Virginia. Her idea of cold is temperatures hovering in the mid-forties, maybe a flurry or two of snow that is enough to send the school board scrambling to cancel classes but ends up barely dusting the ground. 

The cold in South Dakota is a different kind of cold. It’s everywhere, in every corner of the room, in her skin, in her bones, in the furniture, in her clothes. Everything is cold, and it settles inside of her until some mornings she thinks she can’t move for being so frozen. 

But then it snows. 

It snows and snows and snows. 

And it _stays._ It piles high, turning the junkyard and the hills that surround the house into a maze of marshmallow, like a snow globe shaken up and set on a shelf. 

She loves it. She puts on five layers of clothing, wraps two scarves around her neck and runs out into the front yard and _spins_ , her arms outstretched. She sticks her tongue out and catches the fat white flakes in her mouth and laughs in delight when she can _actually taste them_. 

“You look ridiculous,” Dean calls from the front porch, and she stops spinning to grin over at him. He’s holding a thermos in one gloved hand and his cheeks are already turning red. “It’s like you’ve never seen snow before.”

“It’s not like this at home,” she says, tilting her head back and letting snowflakes fall onto the exposed skin of her face. They are icy, tiny little pinpricks of cold that dot across her nose and eyelids. “I’ve never seen it like this.”

“Me either,” she hears Adam say softly from somewhere nearby. Caroline looks over and sees him hovering next to Dean; she watches as Dean moves to the side, to let Adam pass by. He gives him a wide berth, like he usually does, and she knows Adam has noticed. 

Unlike her, Dean has kept Adam at an arm’s length, and a small, shameful part of her thinks perhaps she should have too. It’s the same small part of her that wonders what Sam would think, if he would be hurt or if he would understand that she’s not actively trying to fill the hole he left in her heart but Dean is _never here_ — 

“You two weirdos enjoy,” Dean says, toasting them with his thermos before he heads back inside. 

Her heart sinks, the enthusiasm that had warmed her just moments ago rapidly cooling. 

Adam comes to stand next to her. “He can’t be around me,” he notes flatly, and Caroline thinks that months ago, weeks ago, she would have argued with him. 

Now, she says, “I don’t think he can be around me, either.” 

—

When the snow finally stops two days later, Caroline makes snow angels in the front yard, crowing gleefully to Cas, “Look! It’s _you_!” 

He looks down at the imprint she has made, then back at her. “I don’t understand.”

She laughs and darts to the top of the snow angel to draw a halo with her finger. “See? It’s a snow angel.” 

Castiel wrinkles his nose and a stray breeze shakes loose thick white flakes from the roof; they dust his hair and the shoulders of his ever-present trench coat. He seems impervious to the cold. “I do not have a halo.” 

And it isn’t Castiel’s fault, but her shoulders slip down and she says with just a hint of dejectedness, “Never mind, Cas. It’s okay.” 

She turns away to stare down at her snow angel as the air around them turns quiet, silenced by the thick blanket of snow. Bobby’s place has always been quieter than she’s used to, isolated as it is from neighbors and city noise, but the snow has smothered any of the remaining sounds she has grown used to in the months they have been here. 

“Have I said something wrong?” Castiel asks hesitantly, and when she looks back at him, his forehead is wrinkled in confusion. 

“No,” she tells him, managing a half-smile. “You haven’t said anything wrong, Cas. I’m just—I think I’m just tired.”

His eyes turn sharp, a knowing look crossing his face. “The nightmares.”

“Yeah. Still pretty rough.” 

Castiel tilts his head. “Have the contents changed?”

Caroline shakes her head. “Same as ever.” She turns, ticking them off on her fingers. “Elena, humanity switch flipped. Bonnie, screaming. Stefan, desiccated. Matt, dead. Jeremy, dead. Tyler, MIA.” She shrugs and looks up at the sky, craning her neck as though if she looks hard enough, she might peek through the clouds. “Or Sam in hell.”

The crunch of his footsteps echoes behind her. “Hmmm,” is all he says. 

She drops her eyes from the sky to meet his. “You think they’ll ever stop?” 

He considers her thoughtfully. “Perhaps. When the events are not as fresh.” 

Right. PTSD. “Maybe I should talk to someone,” she muses with a sigh. “Like, professionally.” 

Castiel blinks at her. “We are talking right now,” he says practically. 

“Yeah, that’s not what I—no, I mean, like, to a therapist. Someone to help me process, you know, _everything_.”

But even as she says the words, her heart sinks. A therapist would require honesty, would require the _truth_ , and there’s scant chance of that happening. Frustration wells up within her, threatening to bubble over. 

“I’m tired of feeling like this,” she blurts out, her voice shaking. 

Castiel turns to look at her curiously and she continues as her voice rises in octaves, “Like—everything I do is the wrong thing, like I can’t be friends with Adam because Dean doesn’t wanna be; and like I’m—like I’m _betraying_ Sam when it has nothing to do with him, and I _miss_ him, just as much as Dean does—” She throws her hands up before sitting on a small dry patch of ground. “I gave up my whole life for this, Cas. Doesn’t that, like, count for something?”

Instead of answering, he sits down next to her and gently touches her shoulder. “I am sorry that I’m not of more help,” he tells her quietly. 

She sighs and shakes her head. “Just—you being here helps,” she says. “So, you know. Don’t leave.” 

He nods once. “I will do my best,” he promises gravely, and she lets her eyes close, just for a moment. 

Long enough to pretend she believes him. 

—

The days get shorter, the sun slipping behind the horizon so fast that some days, Caroline blinks and they’re over. She trains with Jo in the morning, while it’s still dark out, and they close the Roadhouse together; Independent Study has shriveled down to a mere hour of her time each day. The only teacher that seems to notice her dwindling presence is Ric, but even his concerned Blackboard messages slow until they stop entirely. 

The one small grasp she retains on normalcy is college applications, and she throws herself into them with gusto. Her essays are long, then edited to within an inch of their lives; and her rough drafts have even rougher drafts. 

In another life, the one she had vaguely predicted for herself years ago, she had imagined herself sending out college applications with at least the fanfare of her mother. She can see it in her mind’s eye still, like a memory that never existed: her mom and dad, and maybe even John, watching excitedly as she hits the submit with a fond, slightly pained smile on her face. 

In this one, she sits in her tiny room, wrapped in the daisy comforter she had pulled off her bed to ward off the cold, and watches as the wheel spins, Bobby’s glacial internet struggling to process the bulk of data she is trying to upload. It’s Adam that knocks on her door as she’s reviewing her Stanford submission, and she almost hides the screen from him before remembering that this is Adam, not Dean, and that her secret, tiny though it may be, is safe with him. 

“Cold?” he deadpans with a single raised eyebrow. She blinks before looking down at herself, wrapped tightly in her comforter and fuzzy socks on her feet. 

“A little,” she demurs back with a half-smile before shifting her laptop over to show him the screen. 

His eyes widen. “Oh man,” he says, coming in and settling himself on her comfort-less bed. “Big deal, right? Where you wanna go?” 

She twists the ends of her hair around her finger. “I’ve applied to a few places,” she says cautiously. She doesn’t look at him, choosing instead to stare down at the small gap between the comforter edges. There’s a loose thread dangling in that tiny empty space and she tugs at it as she continues hesitantly, “Georgetown. UVA and VCU, because _duh_. Dartmouth, Harvard, and Yale, but those are lowkey pipe dreams.” She sneaks a glance up at Adam’s interested face. “And, uh, Stanford.” 

Adam nods encouragingly. “That’s awesome, Care,” he says, and she waits for the penny to drop, for the recognition to flare in his eyes, but it never comes. “Which one is your first choice?”

Caroline chews her lip before she dodges the question entirely. “VCU is closest to home,” she tells him, “and last year, it was Georgetown. Now, I dunno. Maybe Stanford.” She sneaks a look at him. “Sam went to Stanford.”

Understanding crosses his face. “Ah,” he says quietly. 

“But, you know,” she hurries to add, “It’s also, like, _warm_ , there so maybe I’m just really cold and letting it influence my decision-making skills.” 

He half-smiles at her. “Maybe,” he acknowledges, but it feels like he’s humoring her. 

It feels like he can see right through her. 

— 

Mystic Falls High goes on fall break the last week of November and that Monday, she stares at her laptop screen, her heart plummeting as she stares at the dates in front of her. There it sits, the last Thursday of the month, a cornucopia doodle decorating the small box on her calendar. 

She had forgotten about Thanksgiving. 

“You okay?” Adam asks from the other side of the kitchen. At the question, Dean looks up at her from where he had been staring down at an old, decaying notebook with yellow pages. 

“I forgot,” she whispers, staring down at the laptop’s keyboard until the letters blur. “About Thanksgiving.” 

Dean exhales and when she looks up, he is shaking his head in what is either exasperation or disbelief. “‘M heading out,” he announces as he stands, pocketing his keys and taking a final swig from his coffee cup. 

Caroline looks up sharply. “Wait, you’re not staying? Dean, you _love_ Thanksgiving!” An almost hysterical disbelief bubbles within her, threatening to burst out. 

“Gotta chase a lead.” 

And she can’t help it—the bubble bursts, the words spilling out before she has a chance to think about what she’s saying. “Didn’t you just have a lead? The Indiana witches? Did _those_ pan out?” Her tone is waspier than she means, but after she shuts her mouth, she finds that she regrets neither the words nor their bite. 

The kitchen goes quiet—Adam’s eyes widen just slightly as they dart back and forth between her and Dean, Bobby’s shoulders tense, and Dean slowly turns from where he’s standing in the doorway to pin her with a look that she saw on John Winchester’s face more times than she could count. 

“You got something you wanna say?” 

_Oh_ , she has so much she wants to say. She wants to demand he stay home, that he actually look at her in the eyes when he talks to her, that he sit down and explain the plan to her, that he let her _do something_ beyond refilling pint glasses at a dive bar. Weeks’ worth of agitation sits behind her teeth, eating her alive, the anger and the bitterness threatening to overflow the wall she has built inside herself. 

But instead, she simply glares, her mouth snapping shut. 

The wall grows taller. 

—

“We should do something,” Adam suggests carefully, and when she looks up from the dish she’s washing, he looks nervous. As though she is an exposed nerve that may spark and crackle against the idea. “For Thanksgiving.” 

It should be easy to flare like the live wire he seems to think that she is, but the longer they stay in South Dakota, the harder it’s becoming to summon the heat of anger. Most days, all she feels is exhaustion, as though a boulder has settled itself on top of her chest. 

Some days, she can barely breathe for its weight.

“Adam,” she says wearily, “it’s Wednesday. Thanksgiving is _tomorrow_.” She doesn’t belabor the point—even if they wanted to celebrate, it’s highly unlikely there’s any traditional food left at the store. 

He nods. “Right, so obviously, you know, no turkey, but we could still do something, right? Make our own tradition.” He gestures aimlessly and gives her a weak smile. “My mom and I had to do that a lot.” 

Caroline’s heart softens. “We did too,” she tells him quietly, handing him the dish to dry and leaning against the sink. “Me and my mom. Especially after John—” she cuts herself off and sneaks a look at Adam, whose shoulders have tensed at his father’s name. 

“He left you too,” Adam says when it becomes apparent she isn’t going to share any more. 

It’s instinctual, the way she automatically jumps to defend John Winchester; and later, she will examine why she feels so protective over his memory—what it says about him, about her, about what he meant to her. But for now, she powers forward. “I don’t think he meant to _leave_ leave. Like, I don’t think he was planning on never coming back. But after Sam went to Stanford, he just…” she trails off then shrugs. “It hurt too much for him to be around us.” 

Adam sets the dish down with a loud clatter. “That’s bullshit,” he says shortly. “He signed up for that when he married your mom, just like he signed up for it when he knocked mine up.” He tosses the dish towel aside forcefully. “You don’t get to turn off being a dad.” 

“Adam—”

“Quit defending him,” he snaps, turning towards her. “It hurt too much to be around you? Tough shit, man! He abandoned everyone he ever claimed to care about and—”

“He didn’t abandon us, he _died._ ” Her fingers are gripping the edge of the sink so tightly that the skin of her knuckles is bleached white. “You? Dean and Sam? He would have come back to you.” 

She shakes her head and inhales raggedly against the weight of the world that presses down on her. Her lungs burn, a scream caught in her chest, clawing against her throat to get out. “And maybe he would have come back to us too, to me and Mom, but don’t— don’t act like you know why he did what he did. John was a good dad, and a good stepdad, and a good _man_.” 

Adam stares at her. “I wouldn’t know,” he says flatly. “He only ever took me to a few baseball games.” 

Caroline deflates. “I’m sorry,” she whispers, reaching out to touch his shoulder in sympathy. He doesn’t jerk away, but she feels him tense at the touch. “Adam, I’m so sorry.” 

He shrugs and she drops her hand back to her side. “Yeah. It is what it is.” He rubs the back of his neck and shakes his head. “Some family.” 

“Hey,” she protests, “you’ve got me and Dean.”

That makes him snort. “Dean hates me.” 

Denials take shape on her tongue and maybe Adam senses them because he cuts her off before she can voice them. “Don’t, Caroline. He hates me because I’m not Sam. Whoever sent me back could have sent him back and didn’t, so he hates me.” He slides a glance her way. “And because you don’t hate me.”

She doesn’t bother arguing with him. “You’ve got me and I don’t hate you,” she confirms instead and she nudges him with her shoulder in an effort to lighten the mood. “Not to sound like, conceited or whatever but I’m pretty great.”

That makes him laugh, just a little. “You’re not too terrible,” he concedes.

“How’s this,” she says, picking up one of the sea-foam green notebooks he had bought her and flipping past her notes on the various threads found on the r/paranormal subreddit until she finds a blank page. “Turkey taco soup, with Fritos on top, and apple dumplings for dessert.” She wiggles her eyebrows at him. “New tradition?” 

The smile he sends her way is tinged with grief. It’s the grief that she feels reflected so heavily in her own heart, in her bones, down in her very marrow. 

It’s not her mom’s roasted Thanksgiving turkey, it’s not Sam insisting upon opening the canned cranberry sauce and calling it cooking, and it’s not Dean claiming all the sweet potato casserole for himself. 

But it’s something. 

— 

Dean’s been gone for ten days, Bobby for three, and she’s working overtime at the Roadhouse, trying to ignore the memory of a year ago, when she had dragged Liz out to Black Friday shopping at Target at the ungodly hour of three am. 

God, she misses her mother. 

“We’ve got a job,” Ellen says quietly as she refills another beer. Thanksgiving is no hunter’s favorite holiday, as she had found out when she had offered a half-hearted _happy thanksgiving_ to one of the grizzled old hunters sitting by himself in a booth. 

_Ain’t thankful for shit_ , he had snapped back. 

Caroline kept her holiday wishes to herself after that. 

“Okay,” she says to Ellen, wiping the excess foam from the side of the glass. “I’ll be here. I’m always here.” Her tone is just a touch more bitter than she expects, and she winces internally when Jo looks up sharply at the sound. Hurriedly, she adds, “When will you be back?”

Ellen shrugs, already moving on to slinging bags over her shoulder. “A couple days, maybe. Something in Omaha is draining people of blood, leaving the bodies behind.” 

Caroline freezes. “Vampire?” 

“Nope. No marks,” Ellen says, giving the room one last survey before turning to Caroline, who can’t help but straighten under the scrutiny. “Bobby’ll be back tomorrow, so you’ve got the run of the place—” 

“Caroline should come,” Jo says, and she drops it so casually that at first, neither she nor Ellen reacts. She keeps her face schooled into an expression of neutrality, but a thread of anticipation mingled with excitement shoots through her like a dart. 

Then Ellen gives a half chuckle that contains no real humor. “Okay, Jo,” she says mildly.

And it stings, to be brushed off. _Silly, useless Caroline._

Jo bristles, and Caroline feels a rush of warmth towards her. “I’m not joking, Mom,” she says coolly. “Sam and Dean trained her—”

Ellen snorts. “Yeah? When was that? No offense, hon,” she adds with a nod in Caroline’s direction, “but I can’t risk my life or Jo’s life based on training two years ago—”

“You don’t have to,” Jo cuts in flatly. “I’ve been training her for weeks.” Her tone turns practical. “Plus, you’re always saying how we could use another set of hands when we get in tight spots.” She turns towards Caroline. “I think you’re ready.” 

The look on her face—a mix of pride and faith with a touch of defiance—reminds Caroline so sharply of Bonnie and Elena that it nearly takes her breath away. Suddenly overwhelmed, all she can do is nod. 

“Fine,” Ellen says, though she doesn’t look thrilled at the development. “But we don’t tell your brother. The less that boy has to worry about, the better.” 

The words send a pang of resentment through her, followed swiftly by guilt and shame. But Caroline buries the feelings deep before she can analyze them, focusing instead on the two women in front of her. 

“I’m in,” she says firmly. 

— 

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> part ii is written, look for it soon!
> 
> Follow me on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) or [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)!


	4. recitative: thanksgiving (part ii)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies in advance for the sadness in this chapter.

**recitative: thanksgiving  
** _musical declamation of the kind usual in the narrative and dialogue parts of opera and oratorio, sung in the rhythm of ordinary speech with many words on the same note._

* * *

**part two**

“So, we have no idea what it is?”

Ellen shoots her a look in the rearview mirror. “I have suspicions, but that’s all they are. Without concrete evidence, they’re as worthless as not knowing.”

Jo turns in the front seat. “We think it’s a djinn,” she informs Caroline. She holds something out, and when Caroline leans forward, she sees that Jo is grasping the handle of a closed switchblade. She takes it gingerly and inspects it carefully. "Also known in Western culture—incorrectly, mostly—as a genie."

“Seriously? You think it’s a _genie_?” 

“Yep. They like to feed on human blood.” The grin Jo sends her is predatory. “Sound familiar?” 

“Joanna,” Ellen rebukes from the driver’s seat.

“It’s fine,” Caroline assures quickly, leaning forward in her seat. Dean and Sam had conveniently left out the existence of _genies_ from her supernatural training. “So, what, they like, grant wishes?” 

“Not exactly,” Jo hedges just as Ellen says sharply, “The price is more than you’d be willing to pay, hon. Believe me.” 

She feels her head nod even as a tiny internal voice whispers treacherously that she would pay _anything_. 

After all, she has already given herself away. There isn’t much left to spend. 

Three hours later, they pull into the overgrown parking lot of an abandoned building. “We’re here,” Ellen announces grimly. 

The warehouse has seen better days—possibly during the Hoover administration, Caroline thinks with a grimace. The windows are blown out, with the jagged remains of glass occasionally jutting into the air and catching the winter sunlight; and the paint that had once coated the brick has long faded. 

“They like abandoned spaces,” Jo tells her quietly. “Got your knife?”

Caroline nods, and grips it in one tightly clenched fist for good measure. “Yeah. Yeah, I got it.” 

“Good. The blade is dipped in lamb’s blood, so if it’s a djinn, it should do the trick. Keep your eyes open, and don’t get distracted.” She nudges Caroline’s shoulder with her own. “You’ll do great.” 

It’s a ringing endorsement, but Caroline can’t help the shiver of nerves that dances down her spine. “Right,” she says faintly. “Right.” 

They split up, Ellen going left, Jo going right, and Caroline heading straight ahead. There isn’t a breeze on the ground, but high in the tallest shattered windows of the warehouse, one whistles ominously. 

_Eyes up, Forbes_ , she reminds herself, her grip white around the knife. She wishes she had been able to sip from the vial of blood she has tucked in her jacket pocket, but Ellen had watched her like a hawk the entire three-hour car ride. Her free hand slips into her pocket and fingers it, but she’s on far too much edge now to risk the time it would take. 

There’s a loud clatter to her right, followed by a grunt, and Caroline whirls around, her heart thundering wildly as she stifles her instinct to call for Ellen and Jo. _Eyes up, eyes up_ —

Something sharp pierces her arm and she’s faintly aware of a face looking down at her before the world goes dark. 

— 

Caroline wakes up in soft sheets, a heavy arm slung over her waist—her naked waist, she realizes with a jolt—and sunlight beginning to crack through heavy curtains. She blinks and wonders how it all feels so familiar and so foreign at the same time. 

The very male body next to her stretches, the arm tightening before relaxing and retreating; a face presses itself into her neck. Her heart starts to speed up, but her body responds as though this is a regular occurrence, pressing back into him. There’s a rumble behind her, a very familiar rumble and she sits up, adrenaline spiking. 

“Where am I?” she demands, shifting to glare at him. She isn’t supposed to be here, with him, and even though she can’t remember how she ended up here, she at least knows that much. 

Next to her, Klaus yawns and doesn’t open his eyes. “Caroline, sweetheart,” he mumbles sleepily, “it’s barely gone six. Go back to sleep.”

Caroline gapes at him while he proceeds to do just that. Something is _wrong_ , but she can’t remember what it is—there is only the feeling of wrongness. She knows she is supposed to be with Ellen and Jo, but beyond that, there is a blankness that sets her heart pounding. There’s a tickle in the back of her mind, but the more she focuses on it, the more it fades; and the feeling skirts too closely towards the chunks of time that slipped through her fingers while compelled. An icy fear begins to collect in her stomach.

“Klaus!” she hisses at him, knocking against his shoulder. “You don’t get to go back to sleep after—after _kidnapping_ me!” 

_That_ wakes him up. “Kidnapping?” he repeats, his brow wrinkling. “Sweetheart,” and his voice dips, becoming soothing and cajoling, “I think you had a nightmare.”

Caroline narrows her eyes. “Oh really? Then tell me how one minute I’m in Nebraska, and the next minute I’m—” she gestures around. “Wherever this is?” 

He stares at her. “Caroline,” he says slowly, now sitting up himself. “Do...do you not know where you are?” 

She stares back at him, her mind spinning. “I’m—” _supposed to be in Omaha_ , she thinks, but she can’t remember _why_ ; and instead of pursuing the thought further, she takes a wild stab in the dark. “I’m at… home?” Her eyes dart around the room before landing back on him, absorbing every detail: the worry in his eyes, the tense muscles of his arms, and— _wait_.

There is a band on his finger. 

A very significant finger.

Instinctively, her left hand twitches in response and she feels it then, the unfamiliar weight on her own very significant finger. 

The counterpart to his. 

_What in the entire fuck—_

Slowly, she shakes her head. “A nightmare,” she says carefully, and though his face does not lose the edge of concern, he seems to relax just slightly. “I think I had a nightmare.” She manages a weak smile. “I’m—I’m gonna go get some water,” and slowly, slowly, she slides out of the bed and tries desperately to act like she knows where the bathroom is.

_Don’t panic_ , she thinks desperately, _just take a deep breath and figure it out_. _Then panic._

The bathroom is spacious, and, she notes with a tinge of desperation, entirely her taste, right down to the stupid bowl of fake fruit in one of the built-in shelves. But next to the bowl of fruit, a photo in a silver frame catches her eye and she stares at it in growing confusion and fear. 

In the frame is a wedding photo: of her, and of Klaus. In it, she is looking down at their interlaced fingers, but he is looking at her, their foreheads touching, with a soft, tiny smile on his mouth. As though she is his world. 

Her heart twisting, Caroline whirls around and finds herself staring at her own reflection. 

Her hair is its natural blonde, and it’s _long_ —longer than it had been this morning when she had tossed it into a haphazard, _brown_ ponytail. Her face is still undoubtedly her own, but there is something different about it, and after several moments of intense peering, it hits her like a lightning bolt. 

She is _older_. 

Not by much—her best guest is mid to late twenties, but the subtle changes are jarring to see reflected back at her. 

There is a knock at the bathroom door and she flinches in surprise. 

“Care, sweetheart,” Klaus’s voice says gently, “everything all right?”

_Care._

Klaus—her Klaus, the Klaus she knows, the one to whom she bargained her life away—has never once called her that. 

And logically, she had already concluded that he is not her Klaus, just as she already knew in her heart of hearts that this was not her face, or her perfect bathroom with its bowl of wooden fruit and framed wedding photos. This is not her life, but that of another Caroline, whose self she has slipped into. 

“Caroline?” The tiniest bit of anxiety has edged into his voice and it snaps her out of her stunned trance. She gathers all the serenity she can muster before she stands up straight, drawing her shoulders up and back. Whatever had sent her here would be coming for her, and she has to be ready.

If she could only _remember_ —

“I’m fine,” she calls back, noting with a bit of surprise that her voice is firm. “Be right out.”

A beat, as though he’s decided if he believes her, then— “Don’t forget your mum is coming by later,” he says, followed by the shuffle of feet. 

The calm shatters. 

— 

It isn’t just Liz who shows up at their door—painted, she notes with a pang, the bright blue she had always wanted to paint their door in Mystic Falls. But all she can focus on is her mother’s face as she launches herself into her arms. 

“Caroline,” Liz laughs, patting her back awkwardly, “You just saw me a few days ago.”

“Feels like longer,” Caroline mumbles into Liz’s shoulder, inhaling deeply and fighting back the onslaught of tears that threatens to overwhelm. 

Her mother’s hand lingers before she slowly peels back. “Everything okay, sweetie?” 

Caroline stares at her mother’s face and tries to commit as much of it to memory as she can: the way Liz says her name, the way she smells, the crinkle of her eyes as she smiles. “Yeah, Mom,” she lies, “I’m okay.”

But in her rush towards her mother, she had barely noticed the tall figure standing behind her. A very familiar, very tall figure with floppy brown hair and a crooked smile. A figure that she has missed _every day_ for months—

“Happy Thanksgiving, Caroline. No hug for me?” Sam asks cheerfully. “We in a fight or something?”

For a long, aching moment, she stares at him, her muscles frozen. She is locked into place, for fear that if she moves, he will slip through her fingers; vanishing as though he was never there. 

His smile falters. “I was kidding, Care. You okay?” 

And she’s most assuredly _not okay_ , because Sam is standing in front of her, alive and whole and looking for all the world as though the last few months happened only in her imagination. 

She can’t hold herself back any longer; she hugs him as tightly as she can, wrapping herself around him like a barnacle and squeezing tight. He’s so blessedly _real_ , and even as the whispery, logical voice in the back of her mind reminds her that he is not her Sam, he is still _Sam_ and she has been drowning in the sorrow of missing him for so long. It feels as though she can finally breathe. 

“Dude,” he says mildly, his chin dropping to her head as he returns her hug, “you haven’t hugged me like this since you were, like, nine or something.” 

“Yeah,” she breathes, inhaling deeply and taking in the scent that is so _Sam_ —books and Irish Spring soap and aftershave—before she reluctantly releases him. 

He grins down at her and says brightly, “We gonna eat or stand out here all day?” He peers behind her. “Where’s your guy? I gotta tell him about the change in the kickball team schedule.”

The _kickball_ team— “Somewhere in there,” she says, gesturing behind her without looking. She isn’t quite yet willing to look away from him, afraid he might no longer be there when she looks back. “Come on in.” 

She follows him, her eyes fixed on his back. There is something she has to remember, but she _can’t_ , her brain focused entirely on Sam. 

He stops in the foyer, and she stops too; and as she stares at him, she wonders. 

“Sam,” she says carefully, looking down at the foyer’s side table where a framed family photo sits under a large mirror. In it, they are all wearing matching plaid and jeans, grinning brightly at the camera, and it was very obviously a Christmas card at one point. But the photo is very explicitly missing someone, and the absence pulls at her like an unraveling string. “Can I ask you something?”

He glances down at her curiously. “Shoot.” 

She looks down at the photo and traces the frame with one fingertip. “Where—where’s Dean?” 

It happens in an instant—the house around them _flickers_ , like someone has flipped a switch before she can blink, and instead of the warm cream walls, she is surrounded by— 

— _an empty warehouse_ — 

Caroline blinks and manages to just hear the last part of what Sam is saying.

“…car accident,” he says somberly, not looking at her. Something is pulling in the back of her brain, something she is supposed to remember, but every time she gets close enough, it slips away like sand— 

“Caroline,” Liz interrupts with a gentle touch to her arm. “Come help me with this casserole.”

Slowly, as though she is walking through wet, thick flour, she follows Liz’s retreating form. Something is _wrong_ and she knows that she knows what it is, can feel the answer hovering just out of her reach. 

Movement catches the corner of her eye, and when she looks over, she sees— 

—her own arm, cuffed to a thick chain and dangling from the ceiling, an IV nestled in the crook of her elbow, the tube of it bright red with what can only be blood, the muscles in her shoulders and back _burning_ — 

The kitchen is bright and sunny, with soft buttery yellow walls; Liz stops at the counter and turns to face her. Caroline can feel herself staring, but she can’t force her eyes to look away. 

“Honey,” her mother says, “what’s going on?” 

And _oh,_ the temptation to collapse in on herself like a dying star is almost too great to bear. 

“Mom,” she whispers, looking away to try and compose herself before she loses it entirely. “I think I’m—”

But she doesn’t know how to finish it. 

_I’m tired, all the time. I’m overwhelmed. I don’t know who I am anymore. I’m not supposed to be here._

_I’m alone._

With a shaky inhale, she turns back to her mother— 

—whose face is no longer Liz’s. 

Caroline scrambles backwards, panic zipping through her veins as she looks around wildly for a weapon. The kitchen is fading in and out of view, the empty, cold walls of the warehouse bleeding over— 

“Poor thing,” the Liz thing says sadly, her face sympathetic. “All alone in the world. You don’t have to wake up, you know.” Its skin is tinted blue, lined with thick, heavy tattoos; the features male, and its eyes staring at her curiously. Another blink and it slips back into her mother’s skin. “It won’t feel like minutes. You can have an entire lifetime.” It leans forward, her mother’s eyes warm. “You could live the life you’ve always wanted here. Just _let go._ ”

An entire life, with her mother. With Sam. 

With a human Klaus. 

Caroline backs away until she hits the window; it’s there that the magnificent sparkler on her left ring finger catches the light, throwing rainbows in its wake. 

The offer is more tempting than she cares to admit, though she thinks it knows. Her mother’s smile is on the thing’s face and she knows it thinks it has won. 

For a moment, she considers it—lets herself imagine this life. She could be a daughter with a mother again, and a _wife_. It’s an offer of cozy, domesticated warmth, and the temptation to curl up in it like a cat in a sunbeam is almost too great to bear. 

But she can’t, _won’t_ leave Sam, her Sam, to rot in the depths of despair. This Sam is not her Sam, the Sam that never left her hospital room after her car accident with Tyler and Matt; the Sam who traded himself for her humanity; the Sam that had mused that maybe she was Klaus's morning after a millennia of night. This Sam plays _kickball_ with Klaus. 

And there is no Dean here—a car accident, Sam had said, and her memories of life without Dean are as sharp as they are clear. She has lost him before, and may be losing him now, but despite the promises of this life, she will not give up on him that easily. 

Caroline Forbes is made of sterner stuff than that, she thinks firmly. 

She smiles at her mother, who beams back delightedly. 

“Fuck you,” she says sweetly, and she yanks on her arms. Her tendons scream. 

The house vanishes, and her mother’s face becomes _its_ face, the expression twisted into rage, its teeth bared. There is blinding pain and she falls, slipping on something red and wet that has gathered at her feet. The world blackens—

— “Caroline, love. Come to bed.”

Klaus is looking at her, his eyes hooded with intent and arousal pulls at her gut. But she is not his Caroline, the Caroline he courted with flowers, pretty words, and real dates instead of with diamonds and blood. 

She will not take his Caroline from him. 

“Tell me about our first date,” she says instead, yawning dramatically before curling into his side and listening to the steady sound of his heartbeat. 

The mood breaks and he laughs. She feels his lips brush the crown of her head. “Why? You were there.” 

She snuggles in closer, her arm slipping around the narrow of his waist and holding him tight. “Humor me.”

His fingers come up and brush the wisps of hair that have escaped her scrunchie. “It was at the Mugshot,” he reminisces, “and you were reading _Wide Sargasso Sea_. And there was this look of such concentration on this lovely face, and I had to know what you were thinking.”

“So you interrupted? Rude.”

“Mmm, you said the same then. But I couldn’t help myself, so I sat down across from you and asked if it would have been better if Rochester had let Bertha go in the end, or perhaps before.”

She sits up, momentarily affronted. “ _Antoinette_ ,” she corrects firmly. “Her name was Antoinette. He renamed her Bertha and stripped her identity from her.”

Klaus laughs and coaxes her back down to rest her head on his chest. She settles there, letting herself bask in the sound of his heartbeat, his _real_ heartbeat. “Yes,” he agrees gently, “That is what you said then too.” 

This is who he could be, she thinks drowsily as his fingertips pull through her hair. Somewhere in her Klaus exists _this_ Klaus and she thinks she could—

Caroline blinks her eyes open. 

Her wrists are bound with a rusty, thick chain and there is an ice-cold wall at her back. Across the warehouse, a figure hasn’t yet noticed that she is awake again.

The thing that she had been trying to remember hits like a thunderclap. _Djinn._ It could give you the life you want, Jo had said, for a price. 

And apparently that price is all the blood in your body. Caroline bites back a groan. 

Slowly, her head rolls to one side and she winces at the mess in the crook of her arm. There has clearly been a needle there, and it has just as clearly been yanked around. Several yards away is a bright red IV bag, and her stomach twists—that’s her blood. Her arm _throbs_ , and when she reaches for the vial of Klaus’s blood in her pocket, she comes up empty handed. _Great_.

Across the cluttered space, she thinks she sees blonde hair—Jo, her arms hanging from chains, hooked to a deep red IV. Ellen is nowhere to be found and the thought makes her stomach twist in despair. 

“Hey,” she tries to call out; it comes out a tiny croak, but the djinn hears it and turns. It looks disturbingly human as it walks over to her, inspecting her where she sits, slumped on the warehouse floor. She’s pretty sure she couldn’t look more pathetic if she tried. Her fingers, hidden by the long sleeve of her jacket, curl around the knife handle. “Take me back.” 

It regards her curiously, head tilting. “Take me back,” she repeats more forcefully, and she drops her gaze down to where the crook of her arm is a mangled mess. Its eyes follow. “You can have it. I just wanna go back.” 

Something triumphant sparks in its eyes and it bares its teeth at her before leaning down and scooping her arms up in one smooth movement. 

She waits a beat, waits for it to start dragging her over to where Jo is, where it will hook her up to a new IV. Her limbs are deadweight until it turns to look away from her— 

Caroline Campbell has never killed a living thing before. 

But Caroline Forbes has. 

She sinks the knife into its exposed neck, through muscle and soft tissue until she hits bone, and _twists_. The djinn’s eyes flare a bright, sapphire blue before it lets go of her, gasping. 

Caroline drops like a stone, her shoulder making impact with the ground with a loud crack. She cries out in pain, curling into her uninjured side as black dots her vision. 

But she can’t pass out—Jo is still tied up, and slowly, Caroline forces herself to stand. Her vision swims and every step is a struggle but when she finally makes it over to Jo, the other girl’s color is significantly better than she had been expecting. There’s a large key on a side table, and Caroline takes it, sliding it into Jo’s palm before she pulls the IV gently from Jo’s arm. 

“Jo,” she says, as loudly as she can muster, and she is rewarded with a low groan. 

“Mom—” Jo moans, and Caroline looks around fervently, focusing on the floor in order to keep from fainting. Ellen is nowhere to be found. 

“Come on,” she instructs, using the last of her strength to tug on the chains. Jo, who has not lost nearly as much blood as Caroline, nods and frees herself, sliding her shoulder under Caroline’s uninjured arm. 

They stumble past used medical equipment, Caroline desperately fighting to keep her eyes open. And there, curled onto her side behind discarded IV stands, is Ellen.

From the way Jo’s muscles tense, Caroline can tell that she is fighting the urge to drop her and rush to her mother’s aid. She wouldn’t blame her if she did, but Jo sets her down gently to lean against a heavy cabinet before running to Ellen. 

“Mom!” she cries, reaching out and shaking Ellen’s shoulders. 

For several long, tensely silent seconds, Ellen doesn’t move; Caroline holds her breath and leans her head against the cabinet as she fights the urge to sleep. 

Finally, _finally_ Ellen stirs, opening her eyes, and Caroline, overcome with relief, lets her own close. 

“No,” she hears Jo snap out. “Wake the fuck back up, Caroline.”

“‘M so tired,” she protests weakly, her eyes still shut.

“I’ll hit you,” Jo threatens. “Don’t think I won’t.” 

But it’s Ellen’s voice that convinces her. “Caroline,” she says sternly from what sounds like a very great distance, “I ain’t carting you unconscious across state lines, so if you wanna get home, you best keep those eyes open.” 

And to her fuzzy brain, it makes enough sense that she opens her eyes and keeps them on Ellen. 

—

On the way home, Caroline sits in the backseat and stares at her blood-stained jeans. She is reduced to small, simple observations:

She can’t stop shivering; her jacket must be too thin.

Her fingers ache; she must be gripping her sleeves too hard. 

The blood will stain if she doesn’t get her jeans in the washer soon. 

The price was too great for her to pay. 

The vial of blood is long gone; it must have fallen to the warehouse floor. 

Not even Klaus can save her. 

There are small dark spots on her jeans; she thinks they may be tear drops. There is no great flood of them, and her body is still—she is not sobbing. Slowly, her fingertips touch her face and she finds wetness there. 

She is weeping, like a river that has overflowed its banks. It has spilled over the carefully constructed wall inside of her. 

Distantly, she hears voices, then the sound of the car pulling over. Two doors open, then one shuts, and the door to the backseat swings open. 

“Scoot over, honey,” Ellen orders gently, and Caroline registers from very far away that Jo is now in the driver’s seat. Her body doesn’t feel like her own as she slides over, Ellen close behind, and then the car is starting, and pulling back into traffic. 

Warm, soft arms wrap around her and she hears Ellen say quietly, “You’re okay, hon. You’re okay.” A hand strokes up her back, the way her mother used to, and she squeezes her eyes shut tightly. 

“I know it’s hard, sweetie,” Ellen murmurs, her fingers sweeping wisps of hair away from Caroline’s face. “I know, honey. You let it out, okay? You can let it out.” 

“Mom,” Jo says worriedly from the front; Ellen shushes her. 

“Eyes on the road, Joanna Beth.” 

And slowly, slowly, Caroline relaxes into Ellen, who never stops her quiet soothing. “It hurts so much,” she whispers, the words clawing their way out of her throat. “Does it ever stop?”

Ellen is quiet for a long time, long enough that Caroline wonders if she spoke the words or merely imagined them. “No,” she says finally. “But it eases, honey. I promise you it does.” 

“Hey, Care,” Jo pipes up from the front, “Care, you saved us. You saved us, and you saved you.” She glances back over one shoulder to shoot her a warm, tentative smile. “You’re a badass, Caroline.” 

She wants to smile back, but her face won’t budge. Another part of her, frozen. 

An hour into the drive, with Ellen’s arms still tight around her, she slips into an uneasy sleep—dreamless, save for the all-encompassing cold. 

When she wakes up two hours later, Ellen is still holding her, her fingers still stroking softly against her hair. But Caroline’s blood still feels like ice, and when they pull into the Roadhouse parking lot, her muscles are so thoroughly frozen that she has to force herself from the car. 

“Caroline,” Ellen says, coming to stand in front of her and placing both hands on her shoulders. “You take it easy these next few days. Hell, these next few weeks.” She inspects Caroline’s face and whatever she finds there prompts her to continue softly, “You listen to me, hon. The body holds the score.” She gently prods Caroline’s shoulders. “You went through hell today and the body remembers. Be kind to yourself.”

_The body holds the score_. 

Grace, Castiel had said. 

But all she wants is to sleep. 

— 

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some notes about the djinn: 
> 
> I used the lore from Supernatural, but djinn have a long history in Arab and Islamic cultures! Here are some links for further reading if you'd like to know more about their actual history: 
> 
> [What Are Jinn](https://www.vice.com/en/article/9k7ekv/what-are-jinn-arab-spirits)
> 
> [Wikipedia: Jinn](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jinn#:~:text=Jinn%20\(Arabic%3A%20%D8%AC%D9%86%E2%80%8E%2C,later%20Islamic%20mythology%20and%20theology.)
> 
> [The Body Keeps the Score](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B00G3L1C2K/ref=dp-kindle-redirect?_encoding=UTF8&btkr=1#:~:text=The%20Body%20Keeps%20the%20Score%20is%2C%20simply%20put%2C%20brilliant.%E2%80%9D&text=%E2%80%9CThe%20Body%20Keeps%20the%20Score,brain%20development%20and%20attachment%20systems.) is a book about trauma and stress, if you are interested! 
> 
> (Disclaimer: I have not read it, so please use caution! Also, the link is Amazon but please try to use a local bookseller!)
> 
> Finally, [Wide Sargasso Sea](https://www.sparknotes.com/lit/sargasso/) is the prequel to Jane Eyre, and is a very good read. I've linked to the Sparknotes, but if you're interested, you should check it out!


	5. ensemble: christmas

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It hurts, without Sam.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mentions of depression throughout this chapter, please take caution. If this isn't for you, I'd be more than happy to message you a summary of events!

**ensemble: christmas  
** _two or more people singing at the same time, or the music written for such a group_

* * *

It hurts, without Sam. 

Most days, especially since the djinn and its temptation of the life she might have had, the loss of him is a dull ache in the back of her mind that she pushes past: always aware of it, but able to go about her life. But other days—the bad days—she barely wants to get out of her tiny twin bed, exhaustion rooting so deeply that she feels depleted of all energy. It takes all of her effort to move from the head of the bed to the middle so that she can stare blankly out of her window. 

Those are the hardest days. 

Adam notices, and she finds herself treacherously grateful that he is here with them, that he didn’t leave. He isn’t Sam, and she reminds herself of that fiercely, the memory of him protected and cherished in her heart, but— _he helps._

And on the bad days, that is the worst betrayal of all.

Caroline finds herself journaling—Elena had always said it helped, that getting the words down on paper somehow freed up room in her brain for other things. She feels silly at first, unsure of just who exactly she’s talking to, but after a week of forcing herself to put pen to paper, she finds herself writing to Sam. 

It isn’t always Sam—sometimes she writes to her mother, and on the very rare occasion, to John. Those are the days that she’s nearly incandescent with rage, her insides hot and the fury threatening to boil over. It’s those days that the indentions of her pen are so forceful that they mark the next blank page. Those are the days she takes to the hills and runs and runs and runs until her heart feels like it might burst right out of her chest. 

She’s done the research—a quick Google tells her what she already suspects, and from there she falls into a deep online rabbit hole that somehow makes her feel worse about herself than when she had started. 

_Congratulations, Caroline Forbes_ , she thinks to herself bitterly. _You’re officially depressed._

Christmas Day is a bad day. 

Dean had called the night before, already a day late in coming back to Bobby’s. “Got a fucking flat,” he had growled into the phone. “Gonna be late tomorrow.”

Caroline hadn’t even had the energy to scold him. “It’s Christmas Eve, Dean,” was all she could muster. 

“I _know_ , Care, but it’s not like I planned it this way—”

Silently, she pulls the phone from her ear and hands it back to Bobby. 

She is never enough. 

On Christmas morning at 7:00 am on the nose, there’s a soft, tentative knock on her door and Adam’s voice floating in. “Hey, Care,” he says, “It’s Christmas.” She hears him shuffle. “Bobby made hot chocolate, if you want some.”

She is silent; eventually, his shadow under her door disappears. 

Her first Christmas without Sam.

Without her mother. 

Before she can stop herself, she thinks of the other Caroline, the one in the other world, with a mother and a husband and Sam. She doesn’t regret her choice for a single moment, but the memories of that which she walked away from take deep roots during the bad days. Roots that twist and twine so far down within her that if she tried to rip them out, they would take pieces of her with them. 

Caroline drags herself out of bed and into the tiny bathroom across the hall; maybe the change of scenery will help her snap out of it for at least today. She stares at herself in the mirror and wonders what Klaus would think of her now—she certainly doesn’t feel strong, or beautiful, and or _full of fucking light_. 

Her hair is _brown_ , her face is _tired_ , and she barely feels like Caroline Forbes anymore. She’s Caroline Campbell, who has no mother, who lost Sam, and is losing Dean; who grits her teeth and bears it all with no end in sight— 

She feels useless, and shallow, and all the awful things Damon ever said she was. 

She brushes her teeth and gets back in bed. 

Bobby is next to try her door. “Kid,” he says from the hallway, “you gotta get up. Dean’s on his way home.”

And for some reason, _that_ breaks through the ice. 

Caroline throws back the covers and storms over to the door, yanking it open. “Oh?” she hisses, and she can hear in her voice just how much of a brat she’s being; but it’s like she too is just an observer of her own conduct, unable to stop herself. “He decided to come home then?” Tears, hot and bitter, start to form in her eyes. “Then Merry _fucking_ Christmas to us.” She slams the door in Bobby’s bewildered face.

The tears fall and she curls into a tiny ball that shakes with their force.

Castiel tries next. “I don’t understand why I can’t go in,” he says to someone nearby; Adam’s hushed voice says something she can’t make out, and then Castiel says more loudly, “Caroline, Adam says you are sad, so I have brought you your Christmas gift.” His voice drops a decibel. “Please come to the door. For your gift.”

He sounds so hopeful that she can’t bear it. She forces herself out from under the warmth of the comforter, shuffling to the door in her socked feet. When she opens it, Castiel’s expression does not change, but she still sees the flash of worry in his eyes. 

But he recovers quickly, smothering it so fast that she wonders if she even saw it at all. 

“Merry Christmas,” he says seriously, and he thrusts a bottle of prosecco into her hand. “The young man at the store assured me this is the current favorite of the underage teenage girl.” 

The earnestness in his voice almost tugs a smile out of her. “It definitely is for this underage girl, Cas. Thank you.” She tilts the bottle at him in a mock salute. “Cheers.”

Castiel looks at her, really looks at her, and she shifts her weight from foot to foot under the scrutiny. “How are you, Caroline?”

“Fine,” she says automatically. His eyes flicker up to her sleep-mussed bun then to where she’s sure she still carries the evidence of her long morning cry. 

“I think you are lying,” he says quietly.

Caroline inhales shakily. “Cas,” she says, voice wavering, “it’s Christmas. My mom’s gone. Sam’s gone.” She blinks, fighting back another surge of tears. “And Dean isn’t here.” 

“Dean is fine. He is on his way.”

“Yeah. I know. He called last night.” She rubs her forehead. “You know, last year he would’ve moved heaven and earth to not miss Christmas with us.” 

“Caroline—”

“I just think that it hurts him to be around me, and maybe I should just go home,” she blurts out; as soon as the words have escaped her throat, she claps her hand to her mouth. Guilt at her disloyalty sparks, but fades far quicker than she would have expected. 

Castiel’s brow furrows. “We cannot protect you there,” he says slowly, and Caroline shakes her head.

“I can protect myself,” she says firmly. “Cas, I killed a _djinn_.”

“Djinns are not demons,” he points out flatly.

“Okay, _point_ , but—” she hesitates before plunging straight in. “What if I turned back?”

His gaze turns sharp. “It has not yet been ten years.”

“Yeah no kidding. It’s not even been five months.” Caroline sighs, the weight of the path she took bearing down on her. “I was hoping to at least get through college.” 

She expects Castiel to protest, to act as Dean’s proxy, but instead, he looks at her thoughtfully. As though really, truly considering her. 

“Only you can make that decision,” he says finally. “It is, as they say, your life.”

Her thumbnail picks at the label on the bottle. “Yeah,” she mumbles, staring down at the floor. “Yeah, it is.”

— 

Instead of sticking around to wait for Dean—who, she guesses bitterly, isn’t likely making it back today—Caroline pulls on her long underwear, her thick wool socks and her heavy coat. She splits her hair into braids and marches out Bobby’s front door, past where he and Adam are eating lunch in silence, past the Christmas tree that she had decorated by herself, and past the stockings she had ordered hurriedly off of Amazon just last week, aghast that she hadn’t packed theirs from home. 

She hadn’t thought they’d still be gone by Christmas. 

The replacements are sloppy, the A on Adam’s barely stitched on, but there they hang—A for Adam, B for Bobby, two Cs for Caroline and Castiel, D for Dean— _like the alphabet_ , she had exclaimed in delight. Dean had raised an eyebrow and given her a half smile before going back to his notes. 

Caroline hadn’t expected much more from him, and she had waited until he left again on a job to hang the final stocking.

S for Sam. 

The ground crunches under her boots as she makes her way through the junkyard, past the snow piled high on the old, blown out shells of cars. She walks until she reaches the edge of the property, where she turns and glances back at Bobby’s house with its pretty, robin’s egg blue paint. 

She still doesn’t know if Bobby’s ever been married. 

Taking a deep breath, Caroline turns back around and draws in the icy air into her lungs, letting it prick at her lungs until her insides feel like her outsides; when she exhales, she watches the white vapor twist and curl away, evidence that she is _here_ , that she is still real. Even if Dean seems to have forgotten. 

With a nod, she starts out towards the tree line. 

It takes her almost thirty minutes to walk into the woods, and once she arrives, she just...keeps going. Past the first trail she had taken, back in September, when they only just arrived; past the giant rock where she and Jo had perched in silence, each of them lost in their own tumultuous thoughts; past the end of the creek bed that has frozen over solid in winter’s wake.

She hikes up to the top of the river, where, in the warmer months, it flows down from some unseen spring. Now it is a sheet of white ice, the water caught suspended in mid-flight as it tries in vain to rush towards the bottom of the small waterfall.

Her stomach growls and it occurs to her belatedly that she should have packed a snack. 

But she is on a mission. Caroline nods once to the waterfall, and turns towards the forest.

In front of her are two trees—one stretches high above her, its branches soaring into the air; the other is tall but spindly, its trunk twisting around itself. 

“Okay,” she says aloud to herself. “You,” she points to the tall, towering tree, “are pro human. And you,” she points to the spindly, twisting tree, “are pro vampire.” She claps her gloved hands once before squatting down and picking up a smooth stone. The water must have run up here once, millions of years ago, she thinks vaguely. 

If she turns, who knows the erosion she’ll get to see.

Focus, she orders herself. “Okay,” she repeats. “Pro for staying human: a normal college experience.”

“Bo- _ring_ ,” Gabriel says; Caroline jumps in surprise before glaring at him and collecting herself. 

“No one asked you,” she informs him tartly, marching her stone over to the tall tree and placing it gingerly at the base. He sits down on a nearby boulder, folding his legs and watching her. 

“Nah, but I know you always welcome my presence.”

She scowls at him before leaning down to pick up another stone. “You can stay, but keep the commentary to a minimum.” 

Gabriel mimes zipping his lips shut and locking them with a key. 

Mollified, Caroline turns back to the trees, her gloved finger running across the top of the stone. “Pro for turning: no more _poor, useless Caroline_.”

“Wait,” Gabriel interrupts as she puts the stone in front of the spindly tree, “Didn’t you just kill a djinn?” He wiggles his eyebrows at her. “Pretty impressive for poor, useless Caroline.”

“Re-zip your lips,” she orders sternly, “and this time, throw away the key.”

He pouts, but stays mercifully quiet as she returns her attention to her trees. 

“Pro for humanity,” she continues quietly, thumbing the third stone, “getting married. Having kids. Normalcy.”

“Think your hybrid will let you do that?” Gabriel’s tone is suddenly serious, enough so that she doesn’t scold him for interrupting. 

“Deals can be renegotiated,” she says stubbornly. 

“Not with that one.” He eyes her curiously. “You know that. And come on, Caroline, you’re amongst friends here—swear.” He leans forward, his face uncharacteristically somber. “I know what you saw when the djinn put you under.”

She freezes. “A pipe dream,” she protests. 

“Doesn’t have to be. Oh sure, it won’t be _just_ like that. Probably a _teensy_ bit more blood, if we’re being honest.” Gabriel shrugs and watches her. “When are you going to be honest with yourself about what you really want?”

“That’s what I was _trying_ to do, before I was interrupted—”

He holds up both hands in mock surrender. “My bad. By all means, continue.” 

Caroline doesn’t turn away from him. “I did want to get married,” she tells him quietly. “Someday. Kids, too. I wanted all of it—the house in the suburbs, the 9 to 5 job, right down to the golden retriever.”

Gabriel simply looks at her. “Did you?” he asks gently. “Or did you just want what you were told to want?”

She stares at him, unable to answer; and Gabriel motions to her trees. “Keep going with the list. We’ll strike that last one from the record.” When she doesn’t move, he waves his hand at her. “Go on, I don’t have all day.”

That breaks through; she glares at him and turns back around. “Fine. Pro for humanity—not having to live without my family. Jesus _Christ_ , what do you have to say now?”

“Way harsh, Tai,” he protests. “I just wanted to point out that a, your family could die tomorrow and you’d have to go on living without them; and b, you’re _basically_ already living without them.” When she whirls around to protest, his eyes are sad and full of understanding in a way that sits at odds with the rest of his posturing. “When was the last time you spoke more than ten minutes with Dean?”

It hurts, pricking right at the soft, tender spots in her heart. “I don’t know,” she whispers, her throat suddenly too tight, her airways constricting. “I can’t remember.”

For a long moment, neither of them says anything; until finally, Caroline tosses the stone down. “Waste of time,” she says flatly. 

“Nah,” he says. “I think we learned a lot with this little exercise.” He unfolds himself from his perch and hops down. “Want me to turn you back?” He wiggles his fingers in her direction.

“No,” she says; his face falls. “College first.” At his raised eyebrow, she shrugs. “I don’t want to be eighteen forever, okay? I was already stuck in a filler year once. Let me turn when I’m like, twenty-three or something.” Unbidden, the other Caroline’s face flashes in her mind—older, with life experience behind her eyes. She _wants_ that, wants to earn it, and make it her own. 

“Your choice, babe.” He shrugs and she gets the feeling he’s about to leave, to go off to do whatever disgraced archangels do. 

“Hey,” she calls out as he turns back to look inquiringly over at her, “do you know how to get Sam out?”

Shadowy wings spread out behind him and her heart falls as he shakes his head. “Aside from sending a squadron of angels down there to yank him out? Nope. Wish I did.” He tilts his head, growing serious again. “Always liked Sam.”

Caroline visibly deflates, her shoulders rounding and her chin dipping. “If you figure anything out, will you tell me?”

His smile is kinder than she remembers. “You got it, babe. And Caroline?” She looks back up at him. “Merry Christmas.”

With a soft _whoosh_ , he vanishes and she’s alone again with her thoughts and with her trees. Slowly, she turns back to them and picks up the stone she had dropped. 

“Pro for turning,” she says into the quiet forest. “More lifetimes. In case we can’t get him out in this one.” Her finger slips over the smooth edge of the rock before she carefully places it in front of the twisting, spindly tree. 

Sighing, Caroline straightens and adjusts her coat before starting the long trek back down. 

—

“This shit is way too sweet,” Jo comments, making a face at her cup. “Seriously, how do you drink it?”

Caroline, who is already on her second cup, sends her a half smile over the rim. “Practice.” She drains it quickly and reaches over for the bottle, refilling her cup with ease. “Does the job, anyway.”

Two hours after her hike in the woods, and Dean still not home, she had grabbed the prosecco and two solo cups and hunted down Jo. Ellen had left earlier in the day, and from the set of Jo’s shoulders, their parting was about as happy as her own with Dean. 

Jo takes another swig and gives an exaggerated shudder that makes Caroline laugh. “I guess,” she grumbles, smacking her lips dramatically around the sweetness. “You holding up okay?” She eyes Caroline from her side of the couch. “Mom’s on a job, or she would be here too.” 

Her Solo cup could use a little more wine, Caroline decides, tipping the bottle so that more prosecco flows out. And maybe it’s the alcohol, but she means to tell her that she’s fine, that she’s always fine; but to her surprise, the truth ends up spilling out. “I’m doing pretty shitty, actually, Jo.” 

To her credit, Jo looks utterly unsurprised. “I noticed,” she says dryly. “Good for you for admitting it, though.” She raises an eyebrow at Caroline. “Wanna talk about it?”

She doesn’t, not really, but her mouth overrules her, taking off before she can catch up. “Dean’s being a dick,” she says flatly, staring at the top of the liquid as it settles in the cup. “Has been for a while, actually.”

And it’s like once she starts, she can’t stop. “I can’t remember the last time we had, like, a real conversation, and I—I mean, Jo, I don’t think he’s even, like, _looked_ at me in weeks.” She meets Jo’s eyes and gestures with her free hand. “And he won’t let me go with him on jobs, and I’ve changed almost _everything_ about myself to hide here—I changed my _name_ , and dyed my stupid hair; and I thought we would be together, but instead it’s just me. We’re supposed to be hiding from demons, but he’s out there fighting them nine times out of ten, and how is that hiding?” 

“He watched you die,” Jo reminds her gently. She nudges Caroline’s knee with her own. “Maybe cut him a little slack.” 

“I mean, sure, but like—what’s the endgame, you know?” Caroline takes a deep, shuddering breath. “I think he may want to never go home.”

Jo leans forward and clasps her hand over Caroline’s. “I’m gonna say something,” she says, “and if you tell Dean I said it, I’ll deny it until the day I die.” She fortifies herself with a long sip of the wine, wincing at the sweetness. “He has no fucking _clue_ what he’s doing.” 

Caroline rolls her eyes. “None of us do,” she mumbles into her cup. 

“Yeah, but Dean’s out here chasing leads off _Reddit_ , Caroline. Crowley’s not as useful as he hoped, and all the leads go nowhere.” Jo shakes her head. “He’s chasing his tail in circles, and I think he knows it. That shit wears on him. Every new day is another day with Sam still down there.” 

And it occurs to her, like a lightning bolt zipping through her brain, that she knows someone who may be useful. “Jo,” she begins carefully, “I may have an idea.”

Jo narrows her eyes. “I’m listening.” 

“You know how we had Death’s scythe?”

“Uh huh.”

“Klaus got it for us.” _For me._ She waits, letting her meaning settle in the space between them. From the look on Jo’s face, she picks up the dangling thread easily. 

But instead of immediately responding, Jo tilts her head and considers her thoughtfully, as though turning the idea over in her head. “It may not be a bad idea,” she says finally. “It....might be a really good one, actually.” 

Caroline tamps down on the sudden burst of excitement that flashes through her stomach. “You think?”

“Dean won’t like it.” 

“Who’s telling him?” she counters pointedly. 

That makes Jo snicker. “Not me, that’s for sure.” She contemplates Caroline over the rim of her cup. “It’s not a bad idea,” she repeats finally, “but just...make sure you know what you’re doing.” She tilts her cup in Caroline’s direction. “He’s dangerous, that one.”

Caroline looks down at her lap, remembering her deal. 

But all she says is, “I know,” before taking a long drink of wine. 

— 

The bottle of prosecco is gone, and so is Jo, and Dean still isn’t home. Caroline looks down at her phone, with its eight contacts and zero text messages. She needs to call her dad, she thinks fuzzily, but probably best to wait until she’s sobered up a little before broaching that. 

Instead she stares at Klaus’s name until it blurs. 

It’s Christmas, she reasons, and she’s drunk, and she’s sad, and she’s lonely, and—she cuts herself off before her spirits can possibly sink any lower. 

Surely those are good enough reasons to break her silence. 

Before she can overthink it, she hits the green Send Message button next to his name, types out _Merry Christmas_ , and hits the send arrow. Off it goes, her tiny act of defiance, into the ether. She imagines the text flying through the air, past empty cornfields, through mountains, and over rivers, pinging off of electrical wires until it lands neatly on his phone. 

Caroline isn’t at all surprised when, only seconds later, her phone rings. 

She curls on to her side and plugs in her headphones. “Hi,” she mumbles into the microphone attached to the white cord. 

“Caroline.”

It’s not the greeting she would have placed her bet on; and maybe it’s the prosecco, but his voice sounds deeper than in her memories. Deeper, and frayed somehow, as though he’s struggling to keep some deeply rooted emotion in check.

She can guess which one it is. 

“Merry Christmas,” she offers, tucking her knees into her chest and wrapping one arm around them. 

Klaus doesn’t bother to return the sentiment. “Are you safe?” he demands roughly, and now she can hear the sound of commotion behind him. 

“Mhmm,” she hums in affirmative. “R’you at a _party_?” Somehow, she manages to sound both annoyed and envious at the idea. 

He makes a noise that sounds like a growl. She’d bet her limited life savings that he’s off in a hallway, at some fancy Christmas party, scowling at the empty air around him. She wonders if he’s in Mystic Falls, and if her friends are at his fancy party. She _misses_ them, and it’s a different pain from missing her mom, from missing Sam; but it is pain all the same. “Are you drunk?” he asks incredulously. 

“I asked first,” she grumbles, shifting huffily in her comforter. “ _God_.” 

Another growl-like noise, then— “I am not, as a matter of fact,” he says and she feels herself relax, a tension she hadn’t realized had gathered between her shoulder blades easing. 

“S’loud, where you are.”

“Sweetheart.” He sounds like he is speaking through a clenched jaw, the words pried out from behind grinding teeth. “Are you sure you’re safe?”

She nods, then remembers he can’t see her. “Safe as anyone can be, alone in the middle of nowhere on Christmas.” 

“Alone?” His tone sharpens and she imagines him straightening and glaring at the marble floor in front of him. It’s always marble. 

“Yep. Well,” she amends guiltily, “Bobby is here. And Castiel is around, I think. Um, and Adam is here too?” Her voice waivers. “But Dean isn’t.”

Klaus is quiet on the other end for long enough that she wonders if she accidentally dozed off. “Um, hello?”

“Your brother isn’t with you on Christmas,” he says slowly, the consonants crisp and biting.

Caroline sits straight up, and regrets it almost instantly as her head spins. “Um, well. Yeah. He’s not. He got a flat tire and he—” she trails off, chewing her lip. She can’t remember why urgency had flared so strongly, but she stays upright anyway. 

“Caroline,” he prompts, his voice infinitely gentler than just moments ago. “Do you want to come home?”

_So badly,_ and it’s just like him to cut through to the heart of it. “Sometimes,” she murmurs, leaning back against the wall and stretching her legs out in front of her. Her fuzzy socks, an old gift from Bonnie, have French bulldogs on them, and when she wiggles her toes, she realizes her feet are freezing. “Most of the time.” 

“Do you need extraction?” 

_Extraction_ —she groans. “Still not a spy movie, Mikaelson.” 

“I would come for you. If you asked.” 

For a moment, she entertains the idea. Turns it over in her mind, inspects it from all sides. 

Instead, she lays back down and curls back into a ball. “Klaus,” she whispers, “I can’t go home.” 

He makes a dismissive noise. “You can always come home, love.” His voice drops, turning low and honeyed, making her stomach twist. “Say the word, and I’ll bring you back myself.” 

“Yeah, that would go over _real_ well.” She sighs heavily into the phone. “I miss my house. Is my house okay?”

“Your house is fine. Your witch friend has made sure of it—in fact, I imagine your house is the safest place in town.” He pauses. “Or one of them. Regardless,” his voice lowers, and the timber of it skates over her skin. “You could return, should you wish to.” 

“Look, I would come home, but I can’t—I can’t just _leave_.” She sits up again, a thought occurring to her. “Wait, you _imagine_ it’s the safest place? Are you—are you not there? In Mystic Falls?”

“I’ve been busy,” he says flatly, and there’s a noise in the background that sounds like a door shutting. 

Caroline snorts. “Busy is a funny way to say ‘seeing if there’s a way to turn Elena back.’”

“Hardly, sweetheart.” She hears footsteps and the sound of clothing rustling, and pictures him walking briskly somewhere; she wonders where he’s going. What he’s searching for. “Your doppelganger friend holds little of my interest.”

“Yeah, _okay_.” She can’t keep her eyes from rolling. “Look, you don’t have to tell me what you’re doing. I just—I dunno. Wanted to wish you a merry Christmas.”

_I saw us, with a life together_ , she doesn’t say. 

_I wish I saw myself the way you see me,_ she doesn’t say. 

_I think I miss you_ , she doesn’t say.

“Merry Christmas, Caroline,” he tells her, and she leaves it all unsaid, wondering when, exactly, he had burrowed himself so completely under her skin. 

— 

The last hours of Christmas are winding down, Bobby’s mantle clock ticking away the seconds and the minutes as Caroline watches the dwindling fire she had promised to extinguish when she went up to bed. 

She’s curled up in the Notre Dame sweatshirt Adam had given to her as a Christmas gift ( _I was going there,_ he had said sheepishly, _when it happened, and I dunno, maybe you’d like it,_ and she had hugged him as tightly as she could), her hair wet after she had finally sobered up and dragged herself into the shower. 

She has one final notebook that still has blank pages remaining, and it’s resting on the armrest of the sofa as she scribbles into it, the scratching of her pen syncing with the crackle of the fire. It’s a letter to Sam tonight, and she’s nearing the end of the page when the door opens and Dean walks in. She can see his dark circles from across the room and his hair is a mess, sticking up in directions as though he spent the day running his hand over it. 

“Hey,” she says softly, shutting the notebook.

“I know,” he says, shaking snow from his jacket and kicking his boots off before collapsing onto the other end of the couch. “I fucked up. I should’ve been here today.”

Instead of answering, Caroline shrugs, shifting her legs to hug her knees to her chest. 

“Care. I know you’re upset with me, and I—” he stops and shakes his head. “I know, okay? I know.”

Caroline stands and gathers up her blanket and notebook. “I don’t think you do,” she says tiredly, “but I don’t want to fight about it on Christmas.” She motions over to the dark kitchen. “There are leftovers in the fridge and your present is in your stocking. I’m going to bed.” 

“Care,” Dean says again, his voice gravelly as though he spent most of his day shouting, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to— I didn’t mean to miss Christmas.”

She wishes she had the energy to erupt, to flare like a sunburst, to let all the molten heat building up inside of her out, but she doesn’t. Exhaustion has eclipsed anger; it has eclipsed _everything_.

“Okay,” she says flatly. “We’ll talk about it later.” She stops in the doorway and turns back to him, her voice soft. “Merry Christmas.”

There are three minutes left in Christmas when she curls into bed and whispers to the cold glass of her window, “Merry Christmas, Sam.”

—

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are super tough right now, and if you need help, there is no shame in asking: [7 Hotlines That Exist If You Need Them](https://spoonuniversity.com/healthier/7-hotlines-that-exist-in-case-you-need-them)
> 
> As always, you can follow me on [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6)!


	6. chorus: new year's

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It sits between them, the need to fight, like a thorn.

**chorus: new year’s  
** _a group of singers with more than one person singing each part, like a choir_

* * *

It sits between them, the need to fight, like a thorn. 

The week between Christmas and New Year’s passes slowly, like molasses crawling through the mouth of a tilted jar, and Dean doesn’t leave. It’s the longest he’s stuck around in weeks, maybe months—Caroline doesn’t have the heart to search her memory. 

She isn’t intentionally avoiding him. Not really. 

New Year’s Eve finds her digging in the trunk of the Impala, past the stacks of weaponry, looking desperately for a book she _knows_ she packed, but cannot find. Her room is too tiny for there to be many places it could hide, and she has already searched it twice with no luck. 

Caroline stares down in the trunk dejectedly and wonders if this, this stupid missing textbook, is what finally makes her snap. Or has she already snapped, her thread stretched tighter than a violin string until it could reach no further? She isn’t sure anymore. 

Something white catches her eye and she leans forward for a closer look.

When she realizes what it is, her heart twists and she picks it up. It’s Sam’s old cassette adapter, a relic from the months when he’d been the Impala’s sole driver. Caroline turns it over carefully in her hands, as though it will crumble to dust if she’s at all cavalier. 

She’d been with Sam, in Target, when he had bought this. He’d given her a half-hearted grin and shrugged. _I can’t keep listening to Aerosmith_ , he’d said and she’d nodded. She’d just met Stefan and Damon Salvatore, she remembers as she stares down at the white tape, and made a fool of herself trying to convince Stefan to sneak off with her at the bonfire. The self-loathing had eaten at her for days afterwards, had quite possibly driven her straight towards Damon; and the yawning hole where Dean should have been felt as though it stretched over continents, swallowing her whole. 

_You should crank up the Alanis_ , she had told Sam seriously, _and maybe Dean’s ghost will haunt you._

_That’d turn him into a malevolent spirit_ , he’d retorted with a laugh that was more of a bark. But she had succeeded in her mission to make him smile, and she had tucked the sight of it away for safekeeping. It had happened far too rarely after they lost Dean. 

God, she misses Sam. 

They had used the cassette aux cord to blast Dean’s most hated music that night—Sarah McLachlan, Taylor Swift, and a steady stream of poppy boy bands, as though they could taunt him into raising himself from Hell. A smile tugs at her mouth at the memory. 

Dean says quietly from behind her, “I thought I threw that away.”

She glances over at him; he’s holding a wicked looking sword, the blade gleaming and she instinctively takes a step back, allowing him to tuck it safely into the trunk. 

“Apparently not,” she says, looking down at the cassette in her hands. “We—God, we nearly blew out the speakers listening to One Direction, of all things.”

She can practically hear the grimace on Dean’s face. “Don’t worry, baby,” he says to the Impala, “I won’t let you get hurt again.” 

“You’re so weird.” 

“She’s allergic to shit music,” he retorts, shutting the trunk, “and I guarantee that’s all that played through _that_.” He nodes to the aux in her hand. 

Caroline shrugs. “We thought maybe it’d piss you off,” she says quietly, crossing her arms over her chest and watching him. “Nothing else had worked, so why not try making you mad enough to pull yourself out of the pit?” She bites her lip and looks down. “Clearly, it didn’t work.”

“Not a terrible idea,” he allows, leaning against the car. “News didn’t carry, though.”

They stand in silence, Caroline shifting from foot to foot awkwardly, Dean perched against the Impala. The wedge between them feels like a canyon, great and yawning, and she feels like she’s standing on the edge of a cliff. One step forward could doom her. 

“We gotta talk,” he says finally, and Caroline backs away.

“Yeah,” she agrees, “but I—I just. Can you give me, like—a little time?” She inhales jaggedly. “I have a lot that I—I just don’t want to forget anything.” 

He looks torn, like everything he wants to say to her is sitting behind his teeth and may spill out with every breath. It plays out on his face and she waits for him to argue, for him to insist that they have it out now, but then he sighs and nods once. His hand comes up to cup the back of his neck as he stares at the ground. 

“Sure,” he says, and the relief that sweeps over her is just another betrayal in this godawful year. How many times had she wished for Dean back, pleaded with God, with the Universe, with whoever was fucking _listening_ , that she would do anything, would do whatever was asked of her, if she could only have her brother back— 

But she only nods and watches as he retreats into the house. 

—

There are three hours until midnight in Central Time, and a knock at the door, followed by a loud, “Caroline!” from Jo is what propels her from her spot on the couch. It’s for the best—her rear has gone numb and one of her legs is asleep. 

Her eyebrows nearly crawl into her hairline when she opens the door. Jo is wearing a short, sparkly black cocktail dress, red lipstick, and a very pissed off expression. 

“We’re going out,” she announces grimly, thrusting a bottle of champagne into Caroline’s hands. “I know you brought a ton of party dresses, so dust one off, throw some makeup on and—” she leans forward, sniffing delicately, “—maybe shower.” 

“Okay, one, rude,” Caroline defends as she stands aside to let Jo in. “Two, I wasn’t planning on doing anything tonight other than watch the ball drop.” She sets the champagne down on the counter and folds her arms over her chest, arching a single eyebrow at Jo. “I was looking forward to doing nothing, thank you.”

The anger fades out of Jo’s face, replaced by incredulity. “Really? You were looking forward to a thrilling night of watching—” she leans over to glance at the television behind Caroline. “Oh, come on. _Golden Girls_? Seriously?” She shakes her head in astonishment. “At this rate, you might as well be one, Grandma.”

“Hey!” Caroline protests, and Jo turns pleading.

“Caroline, please come with me. I got into a fight with my mom, and I just—I need to blow off some steam, okay?” 

She almost says no. The word takes shape on her tongue and then just—hovers there as she considers Jo, her face hopeful and still a touch angry, her eyes snapping. Because really, when, Caroline asks herself, was the last time she just...let loose for a night? 

And besides, ahead of her, talking with Dean looms large. 

Maybe this is exactly what she needs.

— 

She drags Adam with them too—if there’s anyone who needs to relax, it’s him—and the three of them stare up at the blue pulsating lights of the nightclub. Inside, a truly terrible remix of a Rihanna song is playing with the bass amplified so loudly that it echoes in her chest, the vibrations wrapping around her heart. 

“Hell yeah,” Jo says, but Caroline knows her friend well enough by now to hear the uncertainty in her voice. From her other side, Adam shakes his head. “Two hours, max,” he says. 

“No,” Caroline says firmly, linking arms with both of them. “I put on _makeup_ , curled my hair, and am freezing my ass off for this, okay? We’re staying till midnight, we’re gonna dance till we’re sweaty and gross and possibly get drunk and Dean is gonna yell at us. Hell, Bobby might too. It’ll be fun.” She beams up at the building. “It’ll be almost like normal.” 

Adam groans and Caroline’s elbow jabs directly into his ribcage. “ _Fun_ ,” she repeats emphatically. 

“I forgot how to have it,” he retorts.

An hour later, the heat has been cranked up to uncomfortably warm, the Rihanna song has long faded into what she thinks might be Post Malone, and Caroline blinks, wondering what exactly it is she’s doing here. Is she chasing the ghost of her old life, filling the holes where Elena and Bonnie should be, or just fooling herself into thinking, for a night, that things are normal? 

It’s strange, introspection in the middle of a club, with Ariana Grande pulsing in the speakers, but Caroline can’t remember the last time she enjoyed this. Before vampires, before demons, before the knowledge that the things that live in the dark are very real, she thinks, and before she found that the darkness they call home sometimes called to her too. 

It’s another life, with another girl. 

Standing in the middle of the dance floor, the bottom of her hair plastered to her neck, Caroline almost texts Klaus. Her thumb runs over the screen over her phone as she contemplates it. She wonders, again, as she always seems to lately, what he’s doing: if he’s at a party, or if he’s staring at a canvas, willing it to become something beautiful. She wonders if he could compel her out of her downward spiral, or if that is somehow cheating, and she wonders if he has ever felt this way. 

Around her, the celebration raves and the clock on her phone reads 11:46. She looks up and a cute redhead is flirting with Adam across the bar; he shoots her a pained look and she responds with two over-enthusiastic thumbs up, her smile too big to feel authentic. Jo is deeply engrossed in a conversation with one of the bartenders, and she’s suddenly very aware of just how isolated she is. 

A wave of sorrow threatens to crash over and pull her under: the year she lost her mother, the year she lost Sam, is coming to end and she feels just as alone as she did when it started, when she was a baby vampire wondering how the hell she was supposed to survive in this brand-new world. 

She doesn’t kiss anyone at midnight; instead, she hugs Jo, then Adam, and suggests very quietly that they go home. 

—

She is just the slightest bit drunk, her limbs loose and her brain fuzzy at the edges, and Jo’s arm is looped around her waist as they stumble into Bobby’s house together. Adam had elected to use the backdoor, having, he claimed, no desire to get screamed at by Dean. 

“Shhhh,” she shushes Jo, even though neither of them is being particularly loud. “You have to be _quiet_ , Jo.” Her hand brushes against the wall in search for a light switch before she blinks and realizes sheepishly that the light is already on. 

“Well,” Dean says dryly from the kitchen, “that solves one mystery, Ellen.”

Next to her, Jo stiffens and turns, spinning Caroline with her. 

Ellen stands, a look of profound disappointment on her face. “Joanna Beth,” she says sternly, pointing towards the door, “Car. Now.” 

And instead of flaring out like Caroline half expects, Jo’s face crumples just a little. “Sorry, Mom,” she mumbles, letting go of Caroline and following her mother’s finger towards the door. Her shoulders round and not for the first time tonight, Caroline wonders hazily what has been going down between the two of them. 

When it’s just them in the kitchen, Dean stands too and scowls. “Thought we were gonna have a chat,” he says, his arms folding over his chest as he raises an eyebrow at her. “When did that turn into—” he gestures at her glittery dress, “—this? Seriously, Care?” He shakes his head and she is struck by how the disappointment on Ellen’s face is mirrored on his. 

The violin string inside of her, stretched to its tautest, snaps. 

Her jaw setting, Caroline brings a finger to her ear as though listening to an unseen earpiece. She nods, the movements sharp and exaggerated, her brow furrowed as she says in her best Logan Fell imitation, “This just in, folks—the hoes? Are mad.” She stares at Dean, her eyes narrow and daring him to snap back as her hand drops back to her side.

He stares back at her, and for a moment, neither of them moves. 

Then he snorts, his expression twitching like he’s fighting back a laugh, until he can’t fight it back anymore. He laughs, and it’s contagious. The same laugh tickles in her throat until it’s bubbling out of her and then they’re both doubled over in the kitchen, unable to breathe over a quip that, if she’s honest, wasn’t all that funny. 

“You called me a ho,” he says, half choking on the laughter that continues to escape him.

“Am I wrong?” she challenges, and he laughs, quieter now. 

Dean grins, and it’s briefly reminiscent of his old self. “Not really,” he admits before his face grows serious and his tone somber. “Care,” he says quietly, “We gotta talk about it.” 

She almost begs off—she’s tipsy, she’s sad, she misses her friends and her dad and _fine_ , she misses Klaus too, but the thorn has dug itself so deeply under her skin that she’s afraid if she doesn’t rip it out by the root, the numbness around it will spread until it devours her entirely. 

“Okay,” she agrees softly, dropping onto the couch and toeing her boots off. “Let’s talk.”

—

“There was this girl,” Dean says and Caroline pauses briefly before pulling the scratchy crocheted blanket around her legs. “In Missouri.” He takes a deep breath. “I was in love with her.”

It’s when he glances over at her, a ghost of a smile on his face, that Caroline realizes her mouth has dropped open in shock. She shuts it quickly and he continues. 

“I told her about it—all of it. Mom, Dad, Sam. The job. The whole deal.”

“Really? How’d that go?” 

He half-laughs with no real humor. “She thought I was nuts.” Dean takes a long sip of his beer and stares at the smoldering red embers in the fireplace. “Until a pissed off, racist-ass ghost came after her and her family. Me and Sammy, we helped out and I—I keep wondering about her. How she is, if she’s happy, if she’s safe. Especially lately.” 

She doesn’t miss the emphasis on _lately_. “What was her name?” she asks softly.

Dean hesitates, then fortifies himself with another gulp. “Cassie.” 

_Cassie._

“Dean,” Caroline says quietly, carefully, “if you want to go to Missouri, we can go to Missouri.” 

Shrugging, he shakes his head once. “She’s better off without me.”

“Maybe she should be the one to decide that.” She bites her lip before plunging forward, leaning towards him in an effort to drive her point. “You—you make these decisions for people without asking them, Dean, and then you get angry when they don’t react the way you want.” 

He shakes his head again, leaning forward to prop his elbows on his knees, his gaze never leaving the dying fire. “It’s too risky.” 

The heavy sigh escapes before she can stop it. “Dean, you don’t— you don’t just get to make that call for people, even if you do it because you love them. _Especially_ if you love them. People are allowed to live their lives the way they want to, even if you don’t agree. You get a vote, Dean, but you don’t get to just _decide_.” 

For a long time, the only sound in the room is the low pop of the embers. 

Dean sets his empty glass on the coffee table with a quiet _thud_. “I’ve lost everyone, Caroline.” 

And oh, that stings. “I’m still here,” she points out, unable to keep the hurt from her voice. 

He looks over at her, then away, and her heart aches at the brief sight of tears. “You weren’t, though,” he says quietly. “There was a moment, Care, where you _weren’t_ anymore, and I thought—” he looks down at the floor, his knuckles white where his fingers are laced together, “I thought I had to add another name to the list of people I’d let down.” He ticks them off on his fingers. “Sam, Dad, Mom—”

“Dean, you were _four_ —”

“Caroline,” he says tiredly, “come on. I gotta say this.” 

She falls silent. 

Dean is quiet, lost in thought for a moment, before he begins again. “I’m not like Sam,” he says slowly. “I remember life before this, before everything went to shit.” The fading light from the fireplace plays a symphony of shadows on his face. “He left once, you know. Before Sam was born. Dad, he—they got into a fight, and he left for a few days, and I tried to make her feel better.” A bitter laugh escapes him. “Didn’t work.” 

Words of sympathy, of comfort, form in her throat, but she keeps her mouth shut. He’s staring into nothingness, his eyes fixed on it, and she wonders if he’s almost forgotten she’s there. 

“Dad gave Sammy to me that night,” he says, lost in the memory; and there’s no question as to what night he’s referring, “and I ran. But then I lost Dad. I lost Sam. I lost my mom, and I lost Liz, and I lost you.” He looks over at her. “And it’s like—it’s like I don’t know how to carry on, without Sammy, and without running.”

Silence stretches out between them, but it no longer feels like a canyon. Instead it’s a hazy mist, touching them both, but not separating them. 

“You can talk now, Care.” 

It draws a watery, humorless laugh out of her, and she wipes at her eyes where tears of her own have formed. “Um, well. Now I feel like an asshole.” 

Dean leans back and waves her off. “Nah, don’t. Say what you gotta, or else this will all blow up again. It’ll just be a matter of when.” 

And he has a point, so she takes a deep breath and dives head first. 

“I went on a hunt,” she confesses, “with Jo and Ellen.”

Whatever he was expecting, she’s pretty sure _that_ wasn’t it. 

“ _What_?” 

“You’re not allowed to get mad,” she reminds him firmly. “This is the sharing circle, and besides, I’m totally fine.” 

“Good God.” 

“I’m _fine_ ,” she insists again, straightening the blanket pooled around her legs. “It was a djinn, and I—”

“Caroline,” he groans, his head dropping in his hands.

“Hey, I didn’t interrupt you,” she points out irritably. 

He waves her on without a word. 

“Anyway. Like I was saying. It was a djinn, and I—well. I got caught. It put me under, and I saw this _life_ , Dean. My mom was there, and so was Sam and so was—yeah.” She cuts herself off just in time, but Dean doesn’t seem to have noticed, his body stiffening at the mention of Sam’s name. “And the djinn told me that it would feel like a real lifetime, if I stayed. I could have it, and it would feel _real_.” She reaches out to rest a hand on his arm. “But _you_ weren’t there, and I’ve—I’ve lived without you before, and gotta say, not a big fan of the Dean-less life.” 

It doesn’t elicit the smile she had hoped for so she presses on, steeling herself for her next words. “But Dean, you—you’ve done that to me, too. You keep _leaving_ , and I’m just here, by myself—well, with Adam, and Cas,” she corrects quickly, “but without _you_ , and they’re great, and I’m glad they’re here, but you’re my family, Dean, and you keep talking about how important family is to you, but meanwhile I’m _here_ and you just…left me.” She bits her lip as the fingers of her free hand play with a loose thread on the blanket. “I left my entire life behind to come here, and I’ve been barely keeping my head above water, and it’s like you haven’t even— you haven’t even noticed.” Her voice cracks on the last word and when she blinks, she’s not surprised at the wetness there. 

He jerks under her hand but doesn’t pull away. “And you just, like, decided without any discussion that I was too fragile and too weak to go with you, or that I’d slow you down, or _something_ , and I’m not, okay? I can handle it.” 

“Too important,” he corrects. “Not fragile, and definitely not weak.” He looks over at her, and for the first time in a long time, she thinks he might really see her. “You’re too important to me, Caroline.” 

“But Dean, that’s the _point_ ,” she says, frustrated, and the weight of her deal with Klaus presses down on her from all sides. She pushes it aside; she’ll deal with it _later_. “You’re important to me too, and it feels like you just—you just decided that it was too hard to stick around, so instead you just took off.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m not asking you to just like, give up, okay? I get what you’re saying, I do. But I can go with you sometimes, you know? I can help.” 

Dean considers her. “How did you pull yourself out?” he asks. “With the djinn?”

She chews the inside of her cheek before she answers. “I wanted to stay,” she tells him quietly. “It was more tempting than I thought it would be. But…” she shrugs. “I told you. I’ve done life without you before, and it majorly sucked. And I couldn’t just...leave Sam stuck, you know?”

“Yeah,” he says, just as quietly, “I know.” He sighs heavily, his shoulders rounding with the force of it. “I didn’t mean to do that,” he tells her quietly. “Bring you here, then leave you to figure it out by yourself. And I’m gonna do better but—” he stops, shuts his eyes briefly, then reopens them to focus on the slowly extinguishing fire. “I know what he’s going through. Down there.” His head drops, like he’s suddenly lost the strength to hold it up. “If I stop and stay still too long, Care, I can’t stop thinking about it, and it eats at me until there's no room for anything else.” 

There is nothing she can say, no words of comfort she can offer in the face of that, and she knows it. She’s seen Sam’s face in her nightmares nearly every night for months, and she’s certain that when Dean shuts his eyes at night, he sees far worse. So instead of offering empty platitudes, she scoots over, loops her arm through his, and rests her head on his shoulder, staring into the fire with him. 

“It should’ve been me,” he whispers, and it’s said so quietly that if she were sitting in even her previous spot, she wouldn’t have heard him. “I promised Dad. It was always supposed to me.”

The dying fire pops in the silence. “I think—I think Sam knew that,” she whispers back finally, “and that’s why he didn’t tell you.” She tightens her hold on him, just a little; a reminder that he is here, and whole, and not alone. 

He doesn’t say anything for a long time, just rests his head on top of hers. “I’m sorry, Caroline,” he says finally and she lets her eyes close. “Really. I am.” 

They sit there together for minutes, seconds, hours; it’s well into the new year when, the fire nearly out, Caroline unfolds her legs and stands, wincing as her hip pops at the movement. 

“Gettin’ old, Forbes,” Dean snarks half-heartedly and she shoots him an exaggerated glare. 

“You’d know,” she retorts before widening her eyes and leaning in close, her finger pointing at his hairline. “Oh my _god_ , is that a grey hair?”

He smacks her hand away. “No more sneaking out,” he instructs, standing as well.

“I didn’t _sneak_ , I walked out the front door.”

Dean waves her off and she makes it to the bottom step before she hesitates and turns. He’s staring at the fireplace, the humor gone from his face, and she can’t help herself. She crosses the room and hugs him, as tight as she can. It takes him only a second to work past his surprise and hug her back. 

“I’ll go with you to Missouri,” she says, her cheek pressed into his shoulder. “Just say the word.” 

For a long moment, he doesn’t say anything, then— 

“I’ll keep it in mind.” 

“Good,” she says with more lightness than she’s felt in weeks. It’s not _fixed_ —it’s a drop in the bucket of all the things that sit between them—but it’s better, and that’s more than she’s gotten in a long time. She turns again, this time midway up the steps. “Happy New Year, Dean.”

He half smiles. “Happy New Year, Care.”

And when she curls into her bed, she looks up out of her window and feels, for once, a little less alone. 

— 

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I listened to a lot of 'The Night We Met' by Lord Huron while writing this (and a lot of Lord Huron in general) if you're the type of reader who likes soundtracks with your fic updates! 
> 
> You may have noticed (or not! that's fine!) that the chapter count has yo-yo'd between seven and eight chapters; but I've now got it settled at eight. I may get a wild hair and decide to do nine, but that's unlikely as of now. 
> 
> Feel free to give me a follow on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) or [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)!


	7. duet: valentine's day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She misses Klaus.

**duet** : **valentine’s day  
** _an extended musical passage performed by two singers_

* * *

She misses Klaus. 

It’s something she tries not to think about, once she realizes it. It had taken a while to figure out—she could easily pinpoint missing Sam, missing her mom, missing her friends. Missing Klaus, though, had caught her off guard. 

But the novelty of snow has long worn off, and she’s tired of being so cold all the time. 

Caroline has lost count of how many times she has tapped on his name, opening a new text, only to stare uncertainly at the blank screen. What would she even say? _Hope you had a happy new year, thinking of you_? And would he even text back? 

It seems ridiculous, imaging Klaus _texting_. 

She leaves his number untouched. 

For now. 

—

True to his word, Dean sticks around— “Barely anything to go off of, anyway,” he grumbles, and her mind flashes back to when she had, somewhat tipsily, suggested to Jo that they enlist Klaus and what surely has to be a floor-length list of nefarious contacts in their hunt to rescue Sam. 

Maybe _that’s_ what her text to Klaus should say. Caroline tries to imagine his reaction to weeks of silence after a Christmas drunk dial, only to be followed up by a request for a favor. The idea makes her wince. 

She’s staring down at her phone, still contemplating her options while going down the stairs one early February morning when she hears the _pop pop pop_ sound of gunfire in the backyard; her heartbeat speeds up, along with her steps. She takes them two at a time and rushes out the back door, hands already tightening into fists, ready to face off against whatever is threatening their hideaway, their secret place—

—but it’s only Dean, and he’s adjusting Adam’s hands around an old revolver, an expression on his face that Caroline knows well: part disgruntled, part proud, part resolved. “Better,” he announces gruffly, and when he sees her hovering in the doorframe, he waves her over. 

“Tell Adam how long it took you to nail a bottle from this far away,” Dean orders and she scrunches her face up.

“Like three months,” she confirms and as Dean is reloading the revolver, she takes off to set the bottles back on the top of the fence that borders Bobby’s massive backyard. She inspects each one as she lines them up and smiles fondly; Adam hadn’t hit a single one.

“Say _thank you, Caroline_ ,” she sings out as she returns, the bottles lined up neatly yards away. She sits down in a chair nearby and watches with interest as Adam carefully corrects his own stance under Dean’s watchful eye. When Dean looks away to opine about something—wind resistance, she overhears—Adam leans back and grins at her from over Dean’s shoulder. 

She beams back at him. 

“Now there’s an interesting development,” Bobby comments from behind her; she turns in her seat and directs the same beam towards him. 

“Right?” 

“You do this?” he wants to know as he comes to stand next to her, his arms crossed over his chest as he watches Dean re-adjust Adam’s stance. 

“Nope. Heard shots, came running.”

Bobby looks down at her then, and she spies the tiniest of grins ticking up at the corner of his mouth. “Good for you,” is all he says before they both fall silent and turn back to the scene in front of them.

When Adam hits his first bottle, Caroline jumps to her feet, clapping excitedly; but it’s Dean’s response—a gruff, “Nice work,” that makes him smile, the light on his face bright enough to drive the shadows back.

If only for a moment.

—

Caroline is pretty sure that the universe, being the petty bitch that it is, saw her mended fences with Dean and decided to throw a new obstacle in her path. The only thing that she can’t quite figure out is if it’s something to trip over or to conquer—though she’s almost positive it’s the latter. 

His name is Vaughan and he’s not exactly new to the Roadhouse—Caroline thinks she started seeing him sometime around Halloween, but it’s late in January when she notices that he’s been sticking around for longer than a few days, inching his way up closer to the bar with every appearance. 

“Hot,” Jo comments under her breath as they clean steins. “Solid nine. And that _accent._ ” She mimes fanning herself. 

Caroline shoots a discreet glance over her shoulder; he’s sitting at a tall table by himself, brow furrowed as he stares at a computer screen. “Nine is a high bar, Harvelle.” She wrinkles her nose. “He’s an eight,” she decides, setting down her stein and reaching for another. 

“You’re too picky,” Jo retorts. “All I’m saying is I wouldn’t kick him out of bed for eating crackers.”

That makes her laugh. “I mean,” she concedes genially with a quirk of her eyebrow, “I’d allow him to buy me dinner.” 

Or, at least, she _would_ , in another world. Maybe in a world where her brother didn’t hover with a perma-scowl; one where she hadn’t tethered herself to probably the most powerful being, and definitely the loosest cannon, on the planet—in that world, she’d probably admit to Jo that Vaughan _is_ a nine. In that world, maybe she would flirt with him over the whiskey neat he distractedly orders every night in the Roadhouse. 

But this world is not that world, so she holds her peace—or, at least, she tries to. 

It proves to be more of a challenge than expected. 

Late one night in early February, Caroline bumps Jo’s elbow with her own as they pass each other behind the bar. It’s snowing, _again_ , and the piling powder outside seems to be discouraging anyone from entering. The Roadhouse is a ghost town, no pun intended, until Vaughan walks in, his face expressionless until he sees the two of them. He cracks a smile and aims it their way. 

“You have the bar today,” Jo grumbles as they watch him slide easily into a countertop seat. “Lucky bitch.”

“Lucky wouldn’t be the word I use. Dean made me do like, a billion squats this morning,” Caroline retorts good-naturedly. “I’m just a bitch who can barely shuffle around.” 

The grin Jo shoots her is tinged with lasciviousness. “But think of your _ass_ ,” she suggests with a wink. 

It’s then that a group of rowdy men stumble in and sit in Jo’s section—clearly not hunters, Caroline can tell immediately. Their faces lack the weariness, the hardness, and the ever-present alertness that she’s seen so often on Dean’s face, on Sam’s face, and even on her own occasionally reflected back to her in the bathroom. 

But she is no longer surprised to see it there—it, along with her brown hair, has grown on her. _I’ve done what I’ve had to, to survive,_ she thinks as she pulls her notepad out from under the bar. _I’m a fucking survivor._

“Surprise me,” Vaughan says when he sees her approaching, pen in hand. He arches an eyebrow at her and leans back in his seat.

And she’s not stupid—she knows he’s flirting with her. 

So sue her if she flirts back. 

“Whiteclaws then?” she suggests archly.

That draws a laugh out of him, his eyes crinkling. “Sounds like a plan.” He motions towards the row of bottles behind her. “If you want something, it’s on me.” 

He very clearly means _make yourself a drink and chat with me_ , his Irish accent wrapping smoothly around the words, but she’s not a total idiot. Instead of pulling down one of the dark bottles lining the back of the bar, as he clearly expects, she pulls a cherry Coke out from the fridge beneath the bar and loosens the cap. It hisses, the dark liquid in the bottle fizzing to the top before settling back down. 

“Cheers,” she says, tapping his tall can with the plastic bottle. 

“So,” Vaughan says as she takes a sip of the Coke, “how did you end up in a hunting salon bartending?” He arches an eyebrow and leans forward as though they are co-conspirators. “Especially since you’re underage?” 

She jerks up from where she had been leaning on her elbows to stare in shock at him, sputtering. “I’m not—why would you think—” 

“Oh sorry, was that a secret then?” He grins as she narrows her eyes at him, her fingers tight around the neck of her Coke bottle. “I’ll keep it to myself,” he offers, “if you answer my question.” 

The carefully crafted backstory Dean had drilled into her head slips through her fingers; Caroline stares at him with absolutely no idea what to say. “Uh—” 

His smile cracks as she flounders. “Ah,” he says quietly, the humor vanishing from his face. “Understood.” He takes a long swig of his cider before looking down at the scratched-up bar top. “So. Who’d you lose?” 

It spills out before she can stop it; _he’s got one of those faces_ , she decides later. A trustworthy face, she’ll tell Jo later; _a handsome face_ , Jo will snort back. But for now— “My mom,” she says quietly, picking at the label of her Coke bottle with her thumbnail. She leaves Sam out of it, determined to protect her link to Dean. 

Vaughan’s face, his handsome, trustworthy face, is somber and sympathetic. “Condolences,” he offers gently. “How’d it happen?”

Now she does skirt the truth, picking bits and pieces of it to give him. “My friend was possessed and he—yeah. I don’t think she even—” Caroline blinks rapidly and looks down; to his credit, Vaughan doesn’t push. “It was quick,” she says finally.

He gives her a half smile. “Good,” he says firmly. “Small mercies, at least.”

Throat tight, she nods and takes a long drink of her Coke; it burns down her windpipe. “What about you?” 

That makes him look down and fiddle with his napkin. “Sister,” he says finally, the paper twisting in between his fingers. “‘Bout… a year ago, I guess. Maybe eighteen months.” He looks stricken for a moment. “Goddamn,” he says with a shake of his head before giving a humorless laugh. “Can’t believe it’s been that long.”

“What happened?” she asks gently. He reminds her, inexplicably, of Dean— Dean, before Sam had walked out of their kitchen in Mystic Falls, only to be followed by John; back when the world was simpler and could be boiled down to boys and homework and the drama of who was at the top of the pyramid at cheerleading practice. 

Another long drink, then he shakes his head and says, “Dunno, exactly. Can’t figure out what kind of supernatural fucker dismembers their victims then puts them back together.” 

A cold finger of dread slides down her spine. “That’s awful,” she whispers, a buzzing in her ears. There’s no _way_ , because what are the odds? It can’t be. “Where was it? I’ll, uh—I’ll keep an ear out for you.” She waves at the bar and offers him a weak smile that he doesn’t return. “Lots of talk around here, you know?” 

“Tennessee,” Vaughan says. “Trail goes cold outside of Tennessee.” 

—

“You look weird.” 

Caroline pulls her knees into her chest, her mug of hot cider balancing on the arm of the sofa as she shifts. “Thanks,” she quips sardonically, tucking Bobby’s horrible crochet blanket—that she is definitely stealing whenever they do leave for home—around herself. Her hair nearly brushes the top of the mug; it’s the longest it’s ever been, and the brown has faded into a dark ashy blonde that she doesn’t really like, with lighter blonde roots that are cute on _no one_. But it means she no longer does a double take at her reflection, and that, at least, is something. “You look weird too, Dean.”

He scowls and drops gracelessly down on the other end of the couch; she winces as her mug of cider jostles, coming dangerously close to the edge. “No, I mean, you look like something freaked you out.” His eyes narrow. “Consider this prefaced with all that feminist crap you like: do I have to kill someone?”

She rolls her eyes. “You are such a drama queen,” she informs him crisply, taking a prim sip of her drink. 

“Jo said that Irish dude Vaughan was talking to you today.” At the aggrieved look on her face, he adds swiftly, “She just mentioned it. No girl code was broken, swear to God.”

“Uh huh.” 

“Care,” he says, turning serious, “what’s going on?”

Caroline considers him thoughtfully. “How much do you know about Vaughan?” she asks carefully, her fingers drumming against the side of her mug. 

Dean tilts his head, considering. “Been on the scene a couple months, maybe a year. Not bad, not great. ‘Bout what I’d expect from a new kid.” His gaze sharpens. “Why?”

She hesitates just briefly before it all spills out. “He said that his sister was murdered in Tennessee,” she begins slowly, her finger tracing a slow outline on the mouth of her mug. “He said that she was ripped apart, then put back together.”

“Shitty way to die,” he remarks flatly.

Caroline ignores him. “You were—you weren’t there,” she continues softly and he stiffens, his spine straightening and his jaw setting. “Sam was around, sporadically, but not all the time, and Stefan, he—” she takes a deep breath. “He left, with Klaus, and Damon was looking for him.” She meets his eyes pointedly. “At one point, Damon tracked them to Tennessee, where there were two dead girls found in their house. Dismembered and put back together.” She pauses and waits for the penny to drop.

It doesn’t take long; understanding flares and Dean groans, his chin dropping to his chest. “Shit.”

“Yep.” 

“Fucking _great_. Have I mentioned how much I hate your friends?” 

“Not lately,” she says tiredly.

“Didn’t think so. I really fucking hate your friends.” His eyes narrow. “And your wannabe boyfriend. What the fuck, Care?”

She doesn’t bother trying to defend Klaus—only partly because she knows Dean’s right, that his actions are indefensible. But Dean has never been invincible, has never felt the heady rush of knowing that there are very few things in the world capable of hurting you. Caroline has, and if the quiet in South Dakota has made room for anything, it’s her understanding of just exactly how Klaus ended up the way he is. 

Instead she gives a single, sharp nod and points to him, “Preacher,” then points to herself, “Choir.” 

Dean sighs, slouching further down the couch. “I’ll deal with it,” he says finally, looking disgruntled at the idea. “Covering your shitty friend’s tracks. It’s gonna be fine.” 

And that description of Stefan—dismissive and borderline sneering—spurs her into the defensive lecture that she can’t quite allow herself to give for Klaus. Not to Dean, at least. “Stefan is a lot of things,” she says quietly, eyes fixed on her cider, “and some of them are truly awful. A lot of them, even. But I don’t think I’d be here without him.”

“How do you figure?” Dean challenges and she hums as she takes a sip of her cider. 

“Damon would’ve killed me,” she says matter-of-factory. “Human, vampire, I’m not sure it ultimately would have mattered, but once I turned—if Stefan hadn’t taught me how to control—” she gestures aimlessly into the air with her free hand, “—all of it, Damon would have one thousand percent killed me.” 

She hesitates before adding softly, “And Stefan never…he never turned it off, Elena said. He felt every death, every bad thing he did, and it’s not an excuse, and it doesn’t make it _okay_ , but it—I dunno, Dean, but it does mean something, I think. That counts for something.” 

For a long moment, they’re both quiet. 

“Can I kill Damon, then?” Dean asks casually.

It startles an unexpected laugh out of her. “Knock yourself out.” 

—

“You got mail, kid,” Bobby grunts early one morning, dropping the stack of paper down on the counter next to where she’s nearly falling asleep into her oatmeal. It’s freezing outside and the trek to the Roadhouse seems impossibly far when it's covered in feet of snow. 

Caroline jumps at the _thud_ then blinks blearily at the stack. On top is a slim white envelope with the Harvard crest in the left-hand corner and her heart sinks into her stomach at the smallness of it. _Rejected_. 

“You gonna open ‘em?” Bobby asks, and when she looks up at him, he’s half-grinning, half-beaming. 

“Open what?” Dean wants to know as he enters the kitchen, heading straight for the coffee pot. He turns as he pours it into his mug and stares at her, a frown crossing his face. “Don’t you have school?”

“Independent Study is a _joke_ ,” she informs him as she turns the Harvard envelope over in her hands. “It’s nine-thirty and I’m already done.” 

Dean grimaces then zeroes on in the envelope in her hands. “Oh shit,” he says as he puts the pot down and leans forward. “Hang on, we need Adam and Cas in here for this— _Adam_!” he bellows and this time, both Bobby and Caroline jump. 

“What?” Castiel demands from the doorway just as Adam comes thundering down the stairs, his hair a mess and his eyes slightly wild, scissors gripped tightly in one hand. 

“This isn't necessary,” Caroline tries to say, but she is ignored. Dean is entirely focused on the scissors in Adam’s hand, the beginnings of choked laughter escaping him. 

“What’re you gonna do, snip someone to death?” he demands and Adam colors before tossing the scissors down. 

“You never know,” he mutters before he too focuses on the stack of mail and brightens. “Acceptance letters, Care?” 

She waves the thin envelope. “Rejection letters, most likely,” she mumbles, feeling her cheeks heat. 

“No way,” he assures her, “There’s some big ones in there too.” 

Castiel comes to stand next to her. “I don’t understand. The size of the envelope matters?”

“Nah, Cas,” Dean says, “it’s all about the motion of the ocean.” The comment makes her nearly spit out her cereal, and next to her, she hears Adam snicker. 

“Why don’t the lot of you shut up,” Bobby suggests tartly, “and let her open one? Christ Almighty.”

The group falls silent and Caroline suddenly feels the weight of their collective gaze. “Um,” she hedges, “maybe it’s better if I look at a different one. One that, ya know, might be an acceptance.” 

She’s more than a little surprised when her fingers tremble as she reaches for a hefty envelope, the—her heart speeds up—Georgetown crest large in the left-hand corner. 

“Hell yeah,” she hears Dean say lowly as she tears it open and pulls out the introduction letter: _Dear Caroline Forbes, we are pleased—_

“Oh my _god_ ,” she whispers, and the prickle of tears in her eyes catches her entirely off guard. “Oh my god, I got in.” 

Across the counter, Dean gives a whoop and Castiel turns to Adam, who is grinning from ear to ear. “I don’t understand what’s happening,” he says plaintively, but whatever Adam replies is too soft for her to hear. 

“Open this one,” Bobby says, sliding another thick envelope over, and when the blue of the Yale crest jumps out at her, she starts crying in earnest. She tears it open to read the letter: _Dear Caroline Forbes, Congratulations!_

“Oh my god,” she says again, “I got into _Yale_.” 

Arms wrap around her in a tight hug—Dean’s, Adam’s, and possibly Cas’s, though she’s pretty sure he doesn’t really grasp what they’re celebrating and is just going with the flow. Bobby doesn’t join in, but the smile he sends her way over the counter stretches from ear to ear. 

From her spot buried beneath the group hug, she spots a thick envelope that simply reads _Stanford_ in red blocky font across one corner and her breath catches. _Sam should be here_ , she thinks, and his absence is a raw wound that reaches down to the bone. Her chest aches with the intensity of grief torn anew. 

“I’m crackin’ champagne,” Bobby announces, “since we’re celebratin’.” 

She meets Dean’s eyes as both Adam and Castiel step away; he hasn’t let go of her yet, and she lets her head rest on top of her shoulder, watching as Bobby tears the paper from the neck of a dusty champagne bottle. 

“He should be here,” she whispers, so quietly she can barely hear herself.

“He will be,” Dean whispers back, his arm tightening across her shoulders, and for a moment, she lets herself believe him. 

For a moment. 

—

“What’re you thinking?” Jo asks quietly from the other end of the couch, a mug of hot chocolate in her hands as Caroline tallies up her options: accepted at Georgetown, Yale, UVA, VCU, and Stanford; waitlisted at Dartmouth and Harvard. 

“I don’t know how we pay for anything that isn’t UVA or VCU,” she admits with a soft sigh. “Seems really unfair to make my dad and Dean try to figure that out.”

“Student loans?”

She lets her head drop back and groans. “Looks like.”

“Or…” Jo hesitates before setting her mug down and leaning forward. “Caroline, there is always…” She trails off but Caroline knows exactly which name her friend is leaving unsaid. 

She’s thought about it herself, after all. 

“There are always strings with him,” she says quietly. “I’ve already asked for so much, and there’s more to ask for that I’ve been putting off, and—” she cuts herself off, shaking her head. “I can’t keep handing over pieces of my life, of _myself_ , to him.” 

“Can I say something without making you mad?” Jo asks, tilting her head. “As a like, kind of an outside looking in thing?” She doesn’t wait for Caroline to give an answer. “Based on what I know, which,” she pins Caroline with a look that she’s seen on Ellen’s face countless times, “is not everything, I’m sure—the things that seem to come with strings are things you’re asking for other people.” 

Caroline shifts uncomfortably. “Gathering ancient angelic artifacts was to stop the world from ending,” she reminds Jo, “which definitely benefited _me_ , seeing as how I, you know, live in the world.”

Jo waves her off. “Have you ever asked him from something that’s just for you? Not for Dean and Sam, and thus by extension you? Or not for your friends?” 

She almost answers immediately with _of course I have_ , but the beseeching look on Jo’s face stops her. Her mind replays the terms of their deal, of which she has not told Jo; and further back—from her half-hearted attempt to coax him into removing his hybrids, to acquiring angelic weapons in their fight against Heaven. 

“To be less of a jerk?” Caroline offers weakly. 

That makes Jo smile. “Something that doesn’t require a personality transplant?” she corrects lightly, but the point has been made. “God knows he’s gotta have the money, based on that house.” 

“He does,” Caroline says quietly, letting her head rest against the back of the couch. 

“So,” Jo leans forward, “if money's no object…what’re you thinking?” One of her eyebrows arches. “Gotta be Yale, right?”

“Yale’s really far,” Caroline protests, and Jo waves it off.

“Dean’ll deal,” she says firmly. “Probably by moving to Connecticut with you, but, you know. He’ll figure it out. What do _you_ want to do?”

It’s something she’s been asking herself more and more, especially lately. She’s spent nearly the entirety of her senior year in South Dakota, away from her friends, away from the drama of Mystic Falls, and in the quiet, she’s discovered that she doesn’t really have an answer yet. Oh, she knows she wants Sam back, would give anything to that end; but for herself? 

A question without an answer. 

“I’ll let you know,” Caroline says softly, “when I figure it out.” 

—

Later, she’ll blame it on the arrival of the letters. 

It’s the worst nightmare she’s had in a while. In the six weeks that have slipped past since New Year’s Eve, she’s had nothing but quiet nights, and Caroline had slowly let herself begin to hope that maybe Castiel had been right after all. Maybe it all had been a product of PTSD, and their retreat to Bobby’s has finally, _finally_ begun to work the magic she had been hoping for. 

She knows immediately that it’s a dream. The snowflakes are too thick, and she isn’t cold when they land in her hair or on her face. Her breath is a soft white cloud in front of her, and when she looks around, it takes her a moment to figure out just exactly where she is. 

The buildings that surround her are familiar, despite the fact that she has only visited virtually, aided by Google Earth: the weathered stone and Gothic build of Yale’s campus, blanketed by snow. 

There’s a prickle at the back of her neck, and Caroline knows immediately she is being watched. She takes a deep breath, and the frosty air envelops her lungs as she turns. 

At first, she thinks that it’s Katherine in front of her. Her hair is in curls, after all, and her mouth is set in a hard line that is both familiar and strange all at once. But upon closer inspection, it becomes incredibly apparent that it isn’t Katherine at all—the curls are too loose, and her face carries the sneer awkwardly.

Caroline’s heart sinks. “Elena,” she whispers, her breath turning to vapor in the air. “Oh, no, _Elena_.” 

The girl in front of her—Elena, who she has known since she was in diapers; Elena, who had downed too many Jell-O shots with her at their first high school party; Elena, who had giddily hopped in the passenger seat of her KIA when Caroline had gotten her driver’s license and demanded to be driven around the block—is _Elena_ , her best friend, and yet not Elena at all. 

The brown eyes that flick over her are Elena’s, yet they lack all of her warmth. She doesn’t say anything, and Caroline can only blink in shock before the scene changes. 

This time, she knows immediately where she is. She’s been in this room enough times to recognize its walls, the extravagant fireplace at one end, and the California king on the other with its richly colored comforter. Her shoulders set and she steels herself to see him, to see Klaus. 

But he isn’t there. The room is empty, and as she turns, whirling in a circle, a slow-burning desperation crawling up her throat, she catches a glimpse of herself in the long mirror standing in a corner of the room. 

Her hands come up to press at her temples and she shuts her eyes as tightly as she can— 

When she opens them, the sting of fresh tears hot in her eyes, his room has vanished, replaced by her house. 

Her house, where Sam is sitting on the porch swing. 

She stares at him in shock. “Sam?” she whispers, her hand reaching out, as though he will vanish like he always does in her dreams. 

And he does—she blinks, and he is gone, like a wisp of smoke that had never been there in the first place. 

When she wakes up, it’s with a gasp and tears on her face. 

—

Caroline tiptoes to the bathroom, splashing cold water on her face before returning to her dark bedroom, the sole source of light that of the moon that has slipped through her curtains. 

Her college acceptance letters are scattered on the floor, and she sits down on her bed slowly, her thumb swiping dangerously close to his name, the nightmare burning bright in her mind’s eye.

“Either do it or don’t, Forbes,” she whispers to herself. “But do _something._ ” 

But she loses her nerve, and instead, sets her phone down and tiptoes downstairs. 

The kitchen is quiet, and she freezes as she steps on a creaky board, wincing in anticipation of someone coming running and demanding what exactly she’s doing. And therein lies the problem—she’s not sure herself. All she knows is that if she closes her eyes, she’ll see Sam, sitting on their front porch back in Mystic Falls as though not a day has passed. As though he’s still there, waiting for them to come home. 

Taking a deep breath, Caroline creeps over to the stove and flips it to preheat before quietly moving over to the fridge. 

She’s managed to pull out all the ingredients for banana muffins before she’s caught, the overhead light flickering on and a throat clearing intently. 

“Kid,” Bobby drawls from the doorway, a cup of coffee steaming in one hand, “it’s three in the goddamned morning. What in the hell are you doin’?”

Caroline looks up from her mixing bowl, eyes wide before they narrow at the cup of coffee in his hand. “What am I doing?” she repeats incredulously. “What are _you_ doing, caffeinating at three am?”

He has the grace to look guilty before he sits across the counter from her and hands her the potato masher. “Couldn’t sleep. I’m guessin’ you couldn’t either.”

“Bad dreams,” she mumbles into the bananas as she pulverizes them. “Every time I think I’ve turned a corner, they’re right there to smack me in the face.”

Bobby begins to measure the cinnamon for her, studiously avoiding her face. “I think you’ve got them for the foreseeable future, kid.” He slides the cinnamon her way and she dumps it into her bowl, trading the masher for the whisk. “Coming back from the dead has consequences.” 

She thinks of Jeremy, of Matt, and the ghosts that had haunted them. “I guess there are worse things,” she says softly, and Bobby grunts in agreement before taking a long sip of his coffee. 

They sit in comfortable silence, Caroline adding ingredients to her bowl before Bobby says, “Got into a lot of good schools, kid. Congrats.”

“Oh—um.” She blushes and looks down to pour her batter into the muffin tin. “Yeah. Thanks.”

“Got any idea on where you’re gonna go?”

“Not a clue,” she says honestly, gently steering the bowl from mold to mold. “I’m—I’m kind of wondering if I should defer a year, actually.” 

Bobby’s eyes narrow at her. “Now why the hell would you do that?”

She arches an eyebrow at him instead of answering. 

“Kid,” he says, leaning forward, “I’m gonna shoot straight with you here.” His gaze fixes on hers, blue eyes bright, “He wouldn’t want you to put your life on hold. Especially not for him.” 

Caroline drops her eyes from his and whisks harder, the metal scraping the sides of her bowl. “How would you know? It’s not like he’s here to confirm or deny.” 

She doesn’t have to look up to guess at what expression is on Bobby’s face—she’s seen it on him before, on Ellen and Jo when she and Dean had first arrived in South Dakota, and on the faces of her friends before they had left Mystic Falls. It’s a certain subset of sympathy, the helpless kind, tinged with just the tiniest bit of uncertainty. Like she’s a livewire, and one wrong word might set her sparking. 

Which, if she’s honest, isn’t all that inaccurate. 

But instead of backing down, Bobby says, “Because I knew Sam, and I know why he did what he did. He ended the friggin’ Apocalypse so that you and Dean could live your lives, and—” he breaks off with a sigh, looking down into his coffee mug before continuing slowly, “Listen to an old man, Caroline. Life goes on, even if we don’t want it to.” Grief, old and deep, flashes across his weathered face before he leans back with a sigh. “Lord knows, sometimes we don’t want it to.” 

It’s hard to swallow around the lump that’s been building in her throat. “Bobby,” she says hesitantly, setting the now-empty bowl down next to her. “Who picked the color of your house?”

A half-smile flickers across his face. “Karen,” he says. “My wife.” He tilts his head and considers her. “She would have liked you.” 

Her heart twists at the words, and at the ones that remain unspoken. The air feels heavy with their weight. “It feels like giving up,” she whispers, her arms wrapping protectively around her stomach. 

“It does,” he agrees. “But that doesn’t mean that it is.” He reaches over and pats her hand once, the movement the tiniest bit awkward, as though he had to fight through his own hesitation. “Grief can be a funny thing, kid. It’s gonna tell you that you should stay stuck in it, that you should let it cover you up like quicksand.” 

He tilts his head, his eyes losing some of their focus as he gazes at a point somewhere beyond her shoulder. “But you gotta trust that you knew Sam better than that, ‘cause you will wanna drown in it. But you can’t let yourself.” 

“It’s not easy,” Caroline whispers, using the long sleeve of her shirt to swipe at her eyes. 

“Won’t ever be,” Bobby agrees. “But it does get easier.” He focuses back in on her, eyes sharp and knowing. “Go wherever you want. That’s what Sam would want, and not living your life ain’t gonna bring him back, kid.” He stands and gestures to the muffin tin. “Holler at me when those are done, if you don’t mind.” 

With that, he slides out of his chair and is gone. 

_What do you want?_

The answer feels as though it’s _right there_ , hovering just out of her grasp no matter how hard she reaches.

Elusive. 

—

**tbc**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm sorry for the delay in all my projects (it was the holidays, then there was a coup attempt like wtf y'all????, and all in all, it's just been very hard to focus). But I'm slowly getting back into my groove!
> 
> Your comments mean the world; I would love to hear your thoughts if you have the time. 
> 
> As always, I am on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/sunnydaisy6) and [Tumblr](https://little-miss-sunny-daisy.tumblr.com/)!


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